For a couple of weeks there, I was beginning to think that this year was going to end as crazy as it began. Last year, at the end of the year, we moved sooner than expected with a new baby, had all kinds of sicknesses, our fridge burned, up and oh lets not forget the HUGE FLOOD in January among other things.
So things were going fine and dandy around here until I went to get our oil changed and then a week later, the oil light came on. Bone dry. I went back to Jiffy Lube and they said it looked bad. After taking the car to a couple of places for repairs, being car less at home, and quite a bit poorer, we were up and running again.
Then we had a day of record rain. It was pouring all day! In the afternoon I was looking out the window contemplating how much water had come out of the sky, when suddenly I had a dreadful thought. Our basement does tend to flood when it rains hard. Nothing like a sump pump failure, but enough to have to pull back the carpet and put fans down there. I ran downstairs to check it out. Sure enough there was water coming in all along the edge of one side. I thought it was a good thing I caught it so early. I went upstairs and called Peter to let him know there was a problem. He said he was at least an hour and a half away, but he would pack up and start heading home. I wasn't too panicked at that point.
I went back downstairs and pulled out the handy dandy shop vac. Then I noticed that there were wet spots on the carpet where the kids had been sitting. That meant water was getting under the rug pretty far. I started pulling the carpet back in the spot where the water usually comes in. I couldn't believe it. Just in those 5 minutes or so a LOT of water had come in and it was still coming fast. I quickly plugged in the shop vac and started sucking up as much as I could get into the 12 gallon tank. about 30 seconds later it stopped....it was full! Okay, I was starting to panic now.
I told the kids that we were having a flood and to go upstairs. Instead of doing that, they got super excited, like they had heard they were going to Disneyland or something. They ran around screaming and playing in the water.
I called Peter back and relayed the urgency of the situation. He said he would try to call someone in the ward to come help right away until he could get home. I hung up the phone and looked at the water rising before my eyes. The vacuum bucket was way to heavy to even lift, let alone carry upstairs to dump. I knew things were going to get really ugly if I sat around and waited for help, but I had no idea what to do. I grabbed my phone again and called my brother in law who has helped us with flood situations before. Now I was in a full panic. I burst into tears while explaining the situation and told him I just didn't know what to do.
Luckily I called the right person. He calmly told me that I needed to dump the water into the sump pump hole and that the pump would get the water out. I was so grateful for the advice, it felt like a miracle. I wheeled the vacuum into the next room pulled the wooden box cover off of the pump area and found a 100lb slab of concrete with handles covering the hole. Thankfully I had adrenaline on my side, and I was able to heft the thing off so that I could have access to the hole. I was also glad that I have been lifting weights for the last couple of months.
I dumped the water down the hole and rushed back into the next room to start over. I vacuumed again until it was full, taking less than a minute and dumped it again. I could see the water coming in like a little river, it had never come in like that before. I could barely stay on top of it as I worked as fast as I could to keep sucking water out. After about 20 times, I was exhausted. Mostly from trying to lift the heavy bucket over the carpet every time so that I could wheel it over to the sump pump hole.
Meanwhile the boys had gotten their clothes so wet that they took off their pants, and shirts while they were at it. And when one boy strips around here, they all do. One was even naked. But I had no time to deal with it. I tried to stay calm so that they would, but all the running around and yelling was making me freak out even more. Eden was good and stayed upstairs and (hopefully) watched Lily.
Then finally a nice guy from the ward showed up to help. He started a little pump that sucked the water straight through a hose out the window and I kept vacuuming. He decided to go outside to see if he could see anything weird going on. A couple of minutes later, the water stopped coming in! Or at least the river was gone. The man came back in and said the dirt there was slanting right towards the house and he had dug a small trench to redirect the water. Finally I was able to sit down for a minute and catch my breathe.
A couple more people came to help and then Peter finally mad it home. They all went outside and improved on the trench to redirect the water for about an hour. Eventually everyone left and the kids went to bed and we still had a wet basement to deal with. We extracted as much water out of the carpet and padding that we could with the vacuum and pulled pretty much the whole room up so air could circulate.
The next day we rented a dehumidifier and got more fans going. Peter and a friend spent hours on the trench making it go all the way out through the front yard. So much for bulbs I planted last spring! Now it needs to be filled with rocks and covered back up. I hope this is a permanent solution to our flooding woes. Within a few days everything was dry and put back together. I guess these things just go with the territory when you have a basement in Oregon. I would still say it is worth it. We have 2 huge bonus rooms down there that get used every single day and we love it. It is why we picked our house. So a few ugly moments with it are worth it I guess.
Then once we were recovered from that our little Carter started acting strange. For 2 or 3 days he just layed around doing nothing, not eating much and sleeping quite a bit. I was baffled because he didn't have a fever, runny nose, diarrhea or anything else that would make me think he was sick. No one else was acting that way either. Then about the 4th day, I started to notice that he was having stomach pain. Every few minutes he would start thrashing around and arch his back and pull on his pajamas. Oh, that's the other thing, he refused to wear pants so he was living in footsie PJs. It seemed worse when he would eat or drink so he preferred not to. By the next day I was giving him water through a syringe because he wouldn't take it any other way. I was getting really worried because, if he was sick he wasn't getting better yet.
This continued for another day and we were able to coax him into eating and drinking just enough to keep him going. After another sleepless night of sleeping with him near me, him waking up every few minutes in pain and me getting up to comfort him and crying with him, I had had it. He wasn't getting better and I had no idea what was wrong. At one point he even asked for medicine for his owie. Okay, this kid must have really been hurting because he absolutely hates medicine.
First thing the next morning we headed to to the ER. As we walked through the sliding glass doors, and got in line behind someone else, Carter started hurting and thrashing around. One of the receptionists quickly came out and asked what was going on. I said he was having stomach pain. The other receptionist got on the phone and said they were sending a pediatric patient back right now without checking in. That really got me worrying more.
They put us in an ER room and immediately got Carter into a gown and on a bed. They checked all his vitals and started examining him. They hooked him up to about 4 cords to monitor things. Then they decided that he needed and IV right away. It was so hard to watch because they had a hard time getting it in. Poor guy was not happy. They took blood as well. Then the Dr. came in and did a few other uncomfortably invasive things to him. When he wasn't being poked Carter would just lie there until his tummy started hurting again. It was not at all like a healthy 2 year old would act. They took us to have an X-Ray which didn't show too much and the testing continued on....and on....and on. All day, they tested him and poked and prodded him in every place imaginable. They ended up doing a second IV sight on his other hand because they were taking so many blood tests.
A picture I snapped with my Ipod:
Carter's heart rate was abnormally low as well so that induced a ton of more testing as well. Luckily Carter had one of his favorite blankies with him that day which became a major comfort mechanism.The Dr. decided to consult with the hospital's pediatrician that was on site because he couldn't figure out what was going on, but obviously something was very wrong. They did a ultrasound on his heart which came back normal, just a slow heart rate.
Finally after being there all day, the Dr. and the Pediatrician looked more closely at the x-rays of Carters intestines and thought there was a chance that he had something called Intussusception. That's a mouthful. It means that his intestines were folding in on themselves like a telescope and causing a lot of pain. The test for it is a huge enema with liquid that shows up while they simultaneously x-ray his belly. Interestingly enough, the test is also the cure.
I will just say that after being picked on all day, this was not fun for him. He had had it. After it was done we went back to the ER room to wait for the results. With so many feet of intestines, it is really hard to find sometimes and this was such a case. The Dr. came back and said it was inconclusive. It had been an hour and I let him know that it was not inconclusive. Carter was better. I mean really better. He was perking up and hadn't had any pain since the test.
Peter got there right around that time and we waited a while for observation. Then the Pediatrician came in and said she was going to check us into a hospital room for the night. No surprises there, we knew they would need to watch him longer. It was just nice to finally leave the ER after 9 hours. The pediatric unit was really nice and the nurses were great. They even let me order food for myself through room service the whole time we were there.
Carter was tired, super grouchy and also very wiggly now that he was not in pain. All the chords were very cumbersome to him now and he was really mad about having to stay in his bed. He was also begging for food, but was only allowed to have jello, juice and Popsicles. Poor guy finally wanted to eat after almost a week and he couldn't. Peter left to go home to the other kids and I settled in with Carter. He was so grouchy about his cords that they finally unhooked him he unhooked himself. He was over stimulated and over tired which resulted in a lot of tantruming until I finally got him to go to sleep at 10pm. I went and told the nurses they could hook him back up now that he was asleep. They said they wanted to wait a half hour to make sure he was really out. I did not like hearing that, because I was so tired that all I could think about was going to sleep myself. I went back in the room to lie down and wait for them. I never heard them come in.
I slept the whole night with only brief moments of consciousness to sounds from the heart rate monitor. Carter slept in until about 8am. We both actually got a better night sleep than we had in a couple of days. He was so much better, but a little grouchy still. He ate a hardy breakfast and started to perk up even more. He must have had some frustration to take out on someone because he kept taking his arm with the IV taped to a board and whacking me with it. I felt so bad for everything that he had been through so I didn't fight it too much. After breakfast we went to a great little playroom they have for patients. Thank goodness for that! He was stir crazy and needed to just play. We spent a lot of the day in there and back in the room watching cartoons. He eventually started getting over everything and having fun. He played and played. By the evening the pediatrician came in and said we could go home. She had consulted a cardiologist about his heart rate, and confirmed that although it was strangely slow, there was nothing wrong and it could just be him. We got ready and Carter didn't want to leave. He felt great and wanted to keep playing with all the toys.
I asked the Dr if this was something that could have been fatal. She said absolutely and it would not have gotten better on its own. Thank goodness for modern medicine! I was sure a grateful mommy that day. Grateful that the solution was so simple too. And glad to have Carter back to his normal busy self.
Thankfully, life's challenges seemed to fade away and we thoroughly enjoyed the holidays together. Just the normal craziness of everyday life now.
