This was a very long day for Austin and the family as a whole. The simple trip to the doctors turned out to be an unexpected adventure.
Dad, Jerry, was at work, Genevieve was in school and Natalie was attending a couple of her college courses (with finals approaching I only wanted her to focus on school). Once we ended up in the ER I had to think about who I told what, when and how. I love social media for keeping in touch with family and friends but there is a pecking order (or if I revert back to my army days – a chain of command) for sharing family news in which I didn’t want to create panic or offend someone because individuals through social media knew what was going on before the family did.
Then it got down to the when and the how. Jerry naturally was first, not just because he’s “Daddy” but he’s my first line of support (I couldn’t leave Genevieve stranded at school). I wanted the girls to be told by dad and not a text message or phone call. Jon, Austin’s big brother, being a mature adult got a phone call as well. Immediate family came first than I worked on the extended family.
When it was determined we were going to be admitted somewhere (we were still waiting on a bed) Austin was left in Dad’s care and I made a trip home to gather a few things for both of us. On the way home I made a small detour at my mom and dad’s home. I wanted the news to come from me, to be face-to-face to hopefully alleviate some of their worry. Hoping that if the y recognized I was okay, I was managing, it would make it a little easier. Regretfully, I could not do the same for my in-laws because a trip across the border was not an option. For that I had to rely on a sister-in-law to share what little information we had.
I also took this time to connect with the University of South Carolina folks - Austin and I had flights to participate in a speech and language research study. We were supposed to depart on December 12 which at this time I felt the only option we had was to cancel and hope they would have refunds on our flight expenses.
When the decision was made to admit they gave us options we could go to any Henry Ford Hospital we wanted – with what little information we were given only knowing that Austin was really sick I opted for the main Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. It was the right decision from the start because another hospital may have only ended up sending him there almost immediately. The ER at Henry Ford Fairlane was very receptive to Austin’s needs, our needs in supporting him, understanding some of his limitations as related to his disability, they allowed for modifications to processes to make the experience a little less frightful and confusing for Austin. Early on it was agreed to that I would be able to transport Austin to the main hospital in Detroit, it was agreed that we would wait at Fairlane for the bed to become available in Detroit to reduce the number of transitions for Austin.
During the wait there was of course a shift change and when the bed did come available I discovered the new shift was waiting for an ambulance, waiting for transportation, thankfully I brought them up to speed quickly and around 9:30 p.m. Austin and I made our journey downtown. Austin managed through the wait with lots of repetitive speech, questions and statements, nothing that he necessarily wanted me to respond to each and every time, just his typical thinking out loud, “I’m waiting” or “Can we go now?” over and over again.
At that time of night I had no problems parking in the garage close to the elevators with easy access to a wheel chair. I only wish in the garage I would have known that the main entrance was closed – I just got a little more exercise pushing him to the one entrance only to discover that I had to go to the other entrance.
When we came in there was an angel at the front desk, a patient advocate, sadly I can’t remember her name but she kindly took over the wheel chair and took us directly to our room. On our journey she noted that the bed they assigned him was not a private room and stated she’d fix that but when we got to the floor they immediately put us in a private room and there was nothing to fix. Poor kid was greeted by a shoebox filled with vials and bottles that needed to be filled with his blood. He never complained, never cried, never said ouch, just let them do what they needed to do. Staff had a portable companion bed brought into the room for me, much better than a chair to sleep in for the rare times we could sleep. Thankfully no one questioned the reason I was there.
The day ended with many more unknowns than answers.
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