999ghostslover
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2009
A couple of months ago the podcast put out a request for questions/topics on facebook and I had asked about what different facilities and capabilities did the clinics and hospitals around Disney provide. Unfortunately, my topic wasn't chosen. (No big deal lots and lots of suggestions were provided by listeners and the odds were against me). But little did I know how valuable that information would become the first week of June...
Our June trip was supposed to be so special. Well over a year prior I started my ticker and began my PTR and planning. We were going to celebrate A's kindergarten graduation, B's 3rd birthday and C's first trip. It would mark exactly two years since our last trip and we were going to have a blast. Our first park day (MK of course) was magical. My kids had Pirate's League makeovers for 9 am. The cast members let us in before rope drop, no less that 20 cast members wished my son a Happy Birthday before we even got to Adventureland, we got beautiful Photopass pictures made on an empty Main Street. It was great. With help from my parents we tackled 14 attractions and had a great meal at Liberty Tree Tavern. We crashed in our hotel rooms at Coronado ready for an equally great Animal Kingdom day with an early breakfast at Tusker House to start things off right. But at 2:30 in the a.m. my son began vomiting. Mousekeeping was great and brought all new bedding, tons of towels and were very helpful. He slept the rest of the night okay getting up to vomit a small amount twice more.
We did what you do on vacation.
We rationalized.
It was the heat. It was the junk food. It was the rides.
Maybe it is a small stomach bug.
He'll be fine when he wakes up.
We decided to go to AK for breakfast (this was the day I had 7 matching shirts made for) and my DH or I would return to the hotel with him to rest as he gets over what will surely be a few hour minor hiccup in my perfectly planned trip. At Tusker House he got worse. We took turns with him in the bathroom. There, the number 2s started. It was awful. He was also getting really lethargic and puny. He hadn't eaten or drunk anything since dinner the night before. So we sent my parents and DD6 off to do AK stuff and we headed out with our two DSs. As we were leaving I decided to stop by first aid to see what they thought. After many many trips to the parks this was our first experience here and they are so helpful. It was cool and quiet. The nurse was dressing someone’s badly blistered foot but excused herself to come and greet us. She agreed that he probably needed to be seen by a doctor and on the chance he would need an IV he should go to a real emergency room as CentraCare cannot handle that. She provided us a sheet of paper with great directions to the two closest hospitals as well as the Pediatric Hospital in downtown Orlando. She said that the two closest hospitals, affiliated with Florida Hospital, were close and saw kids all of the time. So, even though I am an RN in a great women's and children's hospital, I decided to go with the close by one. I knew my DH would be at the hotel with our 20 month old. I knew my parents were in a theme park with a 6 year old in 96 degree weather. I needed to be close. But boy did I pick wrong.
We drove back to CSR to grab a few things and then my DH dropped me off at the entrance to Florida Hospital in Celebration, FL. What a beautiful building! It looks like a fine hotel. And that is where its charm ends. Let the nurses in matching BLACK scrubs be a warning. Do not bring your kids here. After a short wait we were brought to a private room right across from the nurses station. The nurses seemed so grossed out that my son's clothes had vomit on them. She had the nerve to say "we always bring a change of clothes to the theme parks for our little ones" Umm so do we, and we used them up before our jungle juice got to the table! He had vomited 2 seconds before and I had changed his clothes 3 times that morning. In our private room we waited for an hour. Then a nurse came in and asked a few questions. Then another 30 minutes a physician's assistant came in and ordered an IV and zofran and bloodwork. They also decided to straight catheterize him in case it was a UTI. The nurses who came in to help basically yelled at my 3 year old to get him to sit still, talked over us the whole time about a coworker and then left. The catheter technique was so so bad it was scary. Like shut down a hospital scary. This woman had no clue that this is a sterile procedure! During all of this I had changed probably 15 diapers. My son's diarrhea was so out of control. It took me asking four times to get a pack of diapers (I ONLY brought 15. silly me.) and I never got any diaper cream despite asking many times. His tooshy was bleeding. It was awful. The PA came back after awhile and said bloodwork was good but that he had some bacteria in his urine. Well, let me tell you if you did a straight cath like this nurse and didn't get bacteria in the sample it would be a miracle. So now they want to hang IV antibiotics. Fine. All the while Brady is still sleeping, he barely wakes up for 30 seconds, will not drink juice or water or eat anything.
After the antibiotics run (30 minutes) no one comes to check on us or anything. We have no idea how long we will be there. If the machine starts to beep a different nurse comes in and says she doesn't know to any of our questions. At some point after many hours I ask if someone can sit with my son so I can go down the hall to use the bathroom. They literally say that they do not have time to babysit. So I ran down the hall to go to the bathroom. I haven't eaten since dinner the night before (maybe I had a biscuit at Tusker House; I remember filling a plate but not being able to eat because Brady was sick again) and I am very hungry. The nurse knew this but no tray or sandwich or anything was offered. Now we are getting to be mid afternoon. We have an ADR at 1900 Park Fair, the only princessy thing we have planned all week for my DD, at 5pm. I know that the nurses cannot control my care but they can give me an estimate of how long we will be here. Can they ask the PA? I told them that this is our special trip, the only one we have ever done with my parents, and I would like to go to the dinner with my DD and my parents if possible. My DH can stay in the hotel with the boys if necessary. If not then he will come and sit here with B and I will take A and C to 1900PF. They just snickered. They were not going to be put out in the least. It was very apparent.
So as late as possible I had my DH drive back to the hospital and I took our youngest to the Grand Floridian to meet up with DD and my parents. We had a nice dinner. I cried a lot. It had been a long day. After dinner my dad and I caravanned back to the hospital so DH could go back with him and leave me with the van and Brady who was still in the emergency room. Our night nurse was on. She was also rude and clueless. My DH tells me that someone came in to get our $150 co-pay. “Really?” I ask, “Because someone came in to take that copay hours ago”. I’m still not sure if that has even been resolved. My Dad and DH left and Brady started to writhe in pain. This was the first action I saw out of him all day. He was screaming and in pain. I checked his diaper and let’s just say my nursing instinct alerted me to the fact that this kid had to pee. He was screaming. The nurses couldn’t care less and I am a wreck. Finally I see an actual live bona fide doctor (the first one all day)and beg him to come in. I tell him about the bad catheter and that he needs to pee and what can we do. Surely these ER nurses have a trick to get a kid to pee (I work with newborns and know several). No, they shoot my 3 year old with ativan. ATIVAN! Look it up. It still makes me mad. He almost immediately relaxes and then pees all over the place. He obviously had not peed since the catheter about 10 hours prior and that is with IV fluids running all day. But now he is on ATIVAN which is making him loopy. He is talking to the walls and all over the place. I tell the nurse that he peed, she can see that the floor is wet, the sheets are soaked, his gown is wet and she walks away. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. So I run down the hall to the linen cart and get my own linens. Someone asks me what I am doing and I tell them that the nurse saw my son soak his linens and left him to wallow in them. With linens in hand I come back to the room which now has vomit and diarrhea everywhere as well. I ask the nurse to help me. She walks away. I try to have my son sit in a chair while I clean up and he falls and crashes to the floor. I’m still mad at myself that I did not report this as a fall. I told the nurse that he fell and hit his head but she did nothing and I’m sure it did not get written up as a “fall”. So with him in the bed, I change his linens. Thanks nursing school! And get him cleaned up. I ask for more zofran which has been ordered for every 6 hours as needed. He hasn’t had a dose in 10 hours. She doesn’t bring it. He starts vomiting more again. Still no zofran.
At midnight we are released from the ER with instructions to have him drink lots of fluids (he still won’t drink anything) and to eat crackers (he won’t) and to have a nice vacation. We were also sent into the scary ghetto of Orlando (the same Orlando I was trying to avoid by taking him to Celebration) to get his prescriptions filled at the only 24 hour Walgreens pharmacy in town. Scary. He throws up in Walgreens and while none of the workers speak English and I speak very little Spanish they rush to help me clean him up at 1am. There are decent people in the world! We sleep soundly that night. The next morning he isn’t any better. Some of us go to Epcot for a few hours and others stay behind with him at the hotel. He really just sleeps all day long. We change dozens of diapers. They are awful. I really started to think he was dying. At one point I could not wake him up and his head lolled back and I thought the worst. We called our pediatrician back in Alabama. Tell her a few details and she says that it is rotavirus, almost certainly. She could not believe that they did not test him for it. She says that we need to get him to a real pediatric hospital quickly. So at about 10pm I drive into the scary parts of Orlando for a second time to the Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital. Let me tell you. I pray no child ever has to get sick or injured at Disney World but this place is a heaven on Earth if they do. I actually feel blessed by the amazing care we received. The medical students, the residents, the attending physicians, the nurses, the child life specialists, the aides, housekeepers EVERYONE was incredible. All I did was cry because I could not believe how blessed we were to be cared for like this. Brady spent the night in the pediatric ER and was admitted by the morning. He was released around lunchtime the following day. He is fine now and just had a checkup where he was declared to be in excellent health. All in all we spent 3 days of our 8 day trip in hospitals. Including Brady’s actual third birthday. The nurses and childlife specialists made him a huge birthday banner, gave him presents and got him a cake (which he wouldn’t eat) I also got came down with rota and was forced down to the pediatric ER that second night there. I was very ill. I will spare you the details. Those nurses took amazing care of Brady while he was upstairs on the floor and I was down in the ER. And how amazing is it that they did not make me go to the adult hospital down the street? They were fantastic.
We had two very short park days after that and then cried the whole way home to Alabama. CSR gave us some free passes to use for a later visit. We are very grateful. The biggest blessing is that the baby and our 6 year old did not come down with the virus. I cannot even imagine what we would have done. And considering the five of us were in a hotel room together it is really a miracle that only B and I got sick .
Thank you for reading. I will post later with a list of lessons learned from this whole experience. Hopefully it will help others.
Our June trip was supposed to be so special. Well over a year prior I started my ticker and began my PTR and planning. We were going to celebrate A's kindergarten graduation, B's 3rd birthday and C's first trip. It would mark exactly two years since our last trip and we were going to have a blast. Our first park day (MK of course) was magical. My kids had Pirate's League makeovers for 9 am. The cast members let us in before rope drop, no less that 20 cast members wished my son a Happy Birthday before we even got to Adventureland, we got beautiful Photopass pictures made on an empty Main Street. It was great. With help from my parents we tackled 14 attractions and had a great meal at Liberty Tree Tavern. We crashed in our hotel rooms at Coronado ready for an equally great Animal Kingdom day with an early breakfast at Tusker House to start things off right. But at 2:30 in the a.m. my son began vomiting. Mousekeeping was great and brought all new bedding, tons of towels and were very helpful. He slept the rest of the night okay getting up to vomit a small amount twice more.
We did what you do on vacation.
We rationalized.
It was the heat. It was the junk food. It was the rides.
Maybe it is a small stomach bug.
He'll be fine when he wakes up.
We decided to go to AK for breakfast (this was the day I had 7 matching shirts made for) and my DH or I would return to the hotel with him to rest as he gets over what will surely be a few hour minor hiccup in my perfectly planned trip. At Tusker House he got worse. We took turns with him in the bathroom. There, the number 2s started. It was awful. He was also getting really lethargic and puny. He hadn't eaten or drunk anything since dinner the night before. So we sent my parents and DD6 off to do AK stuff and we headed out with our two DSs. As we were leaving I decided to stop by first aid to see what they thought. After many many trips to the parks this was our first experience here and they are so helpful. It was cool and quiet. The nurse was dressing someone’s badly blistered foot but excused herself to come and greet us. She agreed that he probably needed to be seen by a doctor and on the chance he would need an IV he should go to a real emergency room as CentraCare cannot handle that. She provided us a sheet of paper with great directions to the two closest hospitals as well as the Pediatric Hospital in downtown Orlando. She said that the two closest hospitals, affiliated with Florida Hospital, were close and saw kids all of the time. So, even though I am an RN in a great women's and children's hospital, I decided to go with the close by one. I knew my DH would be at the hotel with our 20 month old. I knew my parents were in a theme park with a 6 year old in 96 degree weather. I needed to be close. But boy did I pick wrong.
We drove back to CSR to grab a few things and then my DH dropped me off at the entrance to Florida Hospital in Celebration, FL. What a beautiful building! It looks like a fine hotel. And that is where its charm ends. Let the nurses in matching BLACK scrubs be a warning. Do not bring your kids here. After a short wait we were brought to a private room right across from the nurses station. The nurses seemed so grossed out that my son's clothes had vomit on them. She had the nerve to say "we always bring a change of clothes to the theme parks for our little ones" Umm so do we, and we used them up before our jungle juice got to the table! He had vomited 2 seconds before and I had changed his clothes 3 times that morning. In our private room we waited for an hour. Then a nurse came in and asked a few questions. Then another 30 minutes a physician's assistant came in and ordered an IV and zofran and bloodwork. They also decided to straight catheterize him in case it was a UTI. The nurses who came in to help basically yelled at my 3 year old to get him to sit still, talked over us the whole time about a coworker and then left. The catheter technique was so so bad it was scary. Like shut down a hospital scary. This woman had no clue that this is a sterile procedure! During all of this I had changed probably 15 diapers. My son's diarrhea was so out of control. It took me asking four times to get a pack of diapers (I ONLY brought 15. silly me.) and I never got any diaper cream despite asking many times. His tooshy was bleeding. It was awful. The PA came back after awhile and said bloodwork was good but that he had some bacteria in his urine. Well, let me tell you if you did a straight cath like this nurse and didn't get bacteria in the sample it would be a miracle. So now they want to hang IV antibiotics. Fine. All the while Brady is still sleeping, he barely wakes up for 30 seconds, will not drink juice or water or eat anything.
After the antibiotics run (30 minutes) no one comes to check on us or anything. We have no idea how long we will be there. If the machine starts to beep a different nurse comes in and says she doesn't know to any of our questions. At some point after many hours I ask if someone can sit with my son so I can go down the hall to use the bathroom. They literally say that they do not have time to babysit. So I ran down the hall to go to the bathroom. I haven't eaten since dinner the night before (maybe I had a biscuit at Tusker House; I remember filling a plate but not being able to eat because Brady was sick again) and I am very hungry. The nurse knew this but no tray or sandwich or anything was offered. Now we are getting to be mid afternoon. We have an ADR at 1900 Park Fair, the only princessy thing we have planned all week for my DD, at 5pm. I know that the nurses cannot control my care but they can give me an estimate of how long we will be here. Can they ask the PA? I told them that this is our special trip, the only one we have ever done with my parents, and I would like to go to the dinner with my DD and my parents if possible. My DH can stay in the hotel with the boys if necessary. If not then he will come and sit here with B and I will take A and C to 1900PF. They just snickered. They were not going to be put out in the least. It was very apparent.
So as late as possible I had my DH drive back to the hospital and I took our youngest to the Grand Floridian to meet up with DD and my parents. We had a nice dinner. I cried a lot. It had been a long day. After dinner my dad and I caravanned back to the hospital so DH could go back with him and leave me with the van and Brady who was still in the emergency room. Our night nurse was on. She was also rude and clueless. My DH tells me that someone came in to get our $150 co-pay. “Really?” I ask, “Because someone came in to take that copay hours ago”. I’m still not sure if that has even been resolved. My Dad and DH left and Brady started to writhe in pain. This was the first action I saw out of him all day. He was screaming and in pain. I checked his diaper and let’s just say my nursing instinct alerted me to the fact that this kid had to pee. He was screaming. The nurses couldn’t care less and I am a wreck. Finally I see an actual live bona fide doctor (the first one all day)and beg him to come in. I tell him about the bad catheter and that he needs to pee and what can we do. Surely these ER nurses have a trick to get a kid to pee (I work with newborns and know several). No, they shoot my 3 year old with ativan. ATIVAN! Look it up. It still makes me mad. He almost immediately relaxes and then pees all over the place. He obviously had not peed since the catheter about 10 hours prior and that is with IV fluids running all day. But now he is on ATIVAN which is making him loopy. He is talking to the walls and all over the place. I tell the nurse that he peed, she can see that the floor is wet, the sheets are soaked, his gown is wet and she walks away. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. So I run down the hall to the linen cart and get my own linens. Someone asks me what I am doing and I tell them that the nurse saw my son soak his linens and left him to wallow in them. With linens in hand I come back to the room which now has vomit and diarrhea everywhere as well. I ask the nurse to help me. She walks away. I try to have my son sit in a chair while I clean up and he falls and crashes to the floor. I’m still mad at myself that I did not report this as a fall. I told the nurse that he fell and hit his head but she did nothing and I’m sure it did not get written up as a “fall”. So with him in the bed, I change his linens. Thanks nursing school! And get him cleaned up. I ask for more zofran which has been ordered for every 6 hours as needed. He hasn’t had a dose in 10 hours. She doesn’t bring it. He starts vomiting more again. Still no zofran.
At midnight we are released from the ER with instructions to have him drink lots of fluids (he still won’t drink anything) and to eat crackers (he won’t) and to have a nice vacation. We were also sent into the scary ghetto of Orlando (the same Orlando I was trying to avoid by taking him to Celebration) to get his prescriptions filled at the only 24 hour Walgreens pharmacy in town. Scary. He throws up in Walgreens and while none of the workers speak English and I speak very little Spanish they rush to help me clean him up at 1am. There are decent people in the world! We sleep soundly that night. The next morning he isn’t any better. Some of us go to Epcot for a few hours and others stay behind with him at the hotel. He really just sleeps all day long. We change dozens of diapers. They are awful. I really started to think he was dying. At one point I could not wake him up and his head lolled back and I thought the worst. We called our pediatrician back in Alabama. Tell her a few details and she says that it is rotavirus, almost certainly. She could not believe that they did not test him for it. She says that we need to get him to a real pediatric hospital quickly. So at about 10pm I drive into the scary parts of Orlando for a second time to the Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital. Let me tell you. I pray no child ever has to get sick or injured at Disney World but this place is a heaven on Earth if they do. I actually feel blessed by the amazing care we received. The medical students, the residents, the attending physicians, the nurses, the child life specialists, the aides, housekeepers EVERYONE was incredible. All I did was cry because I could not believe how blessed we were to be cared for like this. Brady spent the night in the pediatric ER and was admitted by the morning. He was released around lunchtime the following day. He is fine now and just had a checkup where he was declared to be in excellent health. All in all we spent 3 days of our 8 day trip in hospitals. Including Brady’s actual third birthday. The nurses and childlife specialists made him a huge birthday banner, gave him presents and got him a cake (which he wouldn’t eat) I also got came down with rota and was forced down to the pediatric ER that second night there. I was very ill. I will spare you the details. Those nurses took amazing care of Brady while he was upstairs on the floor and I was down in the ER. And how amazing is it that they did not make me go to the adult hospital down the street? They were fantastic.
We had two very short park days after that and then cried the whole way home to Alabama. CSR gave us some free passes to use for a later visit. We are very grateful. The biggest blessing is that the baby and our 6 year old did not come down with the virus. I cannot even imagine what we would have done. And considering the five of us were in a hotel room together it is really a miracle that only B and I got sick .
Thank you for reading. I will post later with a list of lessons learned from this whole experience. Hopefully it will help others.
