In fact, when the nurse who works for the State called to tell me why they were denying, I quickly reminded them that since we had last had nursing Tess has become more medically compromised and their policies hadn't changed so they couldn't deny us. They still told me "no". I then reminded them that the last time the State had tried to take away nursing hours I had called the Governor's office and threatened to bring Tess to his home with a sign that read, "My Governor does not care about me" attached to her wheelchair and invite the media. When the nurse replied, "That doesn't frighten me.", I quickly responded with, "I'm not telling you this to frighten you. I'm telling you this just to give you fair warning of you you are dealing with, and trust me, I will fight this as far and as long as I have to and do whatever I need to do in order to win." Good times. Good times.
But I digress.
Dr. Stephenson had written a letter to the doctor in charge at the State level on Tess's behalf as well as called him several times (with no answer or return calls) to rattle his cage because he was so appalled that the State had the gall to try to deny Tess nursing care. Long story (sorry!) short, his letter did the trick and we got all the nursing hours we requested.
Huzzah!
Anyway, as I was talking with Dr. S, he wanted to hear about how Tess has been doing because he hasn't seen her in his office in a while. I told him that I thought her seizures were increasing, most likely as a side effect of puberty, and then went on to tell him about her having a cluster of small seizures around 10pm the night before and how a few hours later, Tess's 02 dropped down to 86% and I had to work a little to get it back up into the 90's. I told him that I repositioned her, suctioned her and...wait for it...did chest compressions to help her to breathe better.
He quickly interrupted me at that point and said, "Wait up, wait up. You had to do CHEST COMPRESSIONS on her?!?!".
It took me a few seconds to work out why he was sounding so shocked and frankly, a little freaked out. Then it hit me...Yup, I had actually used the words chest compressions when I meant to say chest therapy, which is basically using your hand to pound on her chest and lungs to move around the gunk in there, as opposed to say, oh, performing CPR, which is what I had said I did.
I laughed and quickly corrected myself as he laughed with me and said, "Now Mama Reidy, I know you are super comfortable doing a lot of scary stuff alone with Tess but I really would think that you'd be a little bit more, well, excitable, when telling me about it if you'd had to perform chest compressions. Also, I hope you'd at least give me a phone call!" (he was joking...he knows me well enough to know that I would be a total basket case if any sort of chest compressions were involved.)
We laughed a little more over my stupid, and very dramatic blunder and I told him, "What can I say? We haven't had nursing help in ten months and I. AM. TIRED."
He very nicely let me off the hook for being such a drama queen with my story and I hung up feeling just a teensy bit like an idiot.
But an idiot who can still laugh at herself.
Chest THERAPY, Joanna. Not COMPRESSIONS.
Meh, Potayto, Potahto..... ;)
The comment about chest compressions scared me. I thought she needed CPR. Good thing it was just help to move everything around.
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