(no subject)

Scott and Cordelia ended up staying up quite late, later than I wanted to. I can see why Cordelia wanted to. Shifting in order to lie down was pretty awful for her.

I set an alarm for 3:00 a.m. so that I could give her more ibuprofen. Scott thinks that she should just sleep until the pain wakes her and have medicine then. I think that’s stupid because the pain is so bad that, if we wait, she won’t be able to get to the bathroom, even with help, for at least an hour after we give her medication. We’re alternating ibuprofen with Tylenol, one or the other of them every four hours.

At any rate, Scott and I both got about six hours of sleep last night. I have no idea how much Cordelia slept. We’re using our cell phones so that she doesn’t have to yell to wake me at night. I would definitely wake up if she yelled. The house is tiny. But I think she shouldn’t have to put that much effort in.

We have an appointment with Cordelia’s pediatrician a little before noon. The nurse I talked to wasn’t sure we actually needed an appointment, but the ER folks said to follow up with the pediatrician and with the orthopedist. I’m also wanting to talk to an actual doctor about pain management and maybe get some advice for dealing with the logistics of things like changing clothing without hurting her knee. She can’t stay in what she was wearing yesterday indefinitely.

Scott’s going to take my paperwork in without me. I would like to do it, but we don’t want to leave Cordelia alone if we don’t have to.

Cordelia actually managed to stand up from sitting, using her crutches and unassisted, once this morning. Getting up and down from the couch is much, much harder because of all the pillows and such that we’ve got to keep her leg elevated.

I don’t think I mentioned yesterday— We had to call an ambulance to get Cordelia to the ER. I have no idea how much that will cost us (or how much the insurance will cover). There was a friend who happened to be at the school at the time who offered to drive us, but I think that the process would have hurt Cordelia a lot more if we’d done that. We have a $200 copay for ER visits which isn’t great, but what option did we have?

Having Cordelia sleeping in the living room will change our family routines a lot, I suspect. She needs to be asleep by 10:00 (I’d prefer earlier, but Scott and Cordelia agree that it’s not necessary), and Scott’s used to watching things like The 100 and The Magicians between 9:00 and 10:45. Cordelia doesn’t want to see those shows at all, and she can’t sleep with the TV on anyway.

(no subject)

Okay, the pediatrician says there’s no point in Cordelia coming in to see her because she can’t treat anything related to the injury. That has to wait until she sees an orthopedist. The orthopedist is only in Ann Arbor on Thursdays, and next Thursday is utterly impossible. That’s a huge event at the school that Cordelia both needs to be there to prepare for and needs to be present at. They might excuse her for this, but they’d be very reluctant because this is one of The Big Academic Events of the school year. It involves group presentations of multi-disciplinary projects that they’ve been working on for months.

All the orthopedics people are willing to offer is that maybe she can see a physician’s assistant instead, and that still doesn’t help on the pain front right now. They’re supposed to call me back 'later.'

For getting Cordelia to these appointments, I’m going to have to allow a lot more time for getting cabs because we won’t be able to use the vans that do about half the runs. There’s no way she could get in and out of one, and there’s nowhere for her to prop her leg or even to keep it straight once she’s in. In a sedan cab, we can at least have her stretch her leg across the backseat. That leaves me needing the front seat, something that only some drivers are willing to do and which will further delay us getting a cab.

The pediatrician is willing to give us an 'urgent' orthopedic referral, and we may have to go with that, but I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t get us to see someone today, so we’ll have to do it without Scott to help. That will not be at all fun.

(no subject)

It took six hours and a lot of phone calls, but I finally got someone to say that Cordelia seeing a different pediatric orthopedist would be just fine. The problem is that the rules state that she should see the doctor who was on call in the ER yesterday. That doctor only sees patients in Ann Arbor on Thursdays (and in Brighton on, I think, Tuesdays). Her PAs and nurses practitioners all also only see patients in Ann Arbor on Thursdays.

I finally got someone to talk to the doctor about it, and she apparently said, "Well, of course they can see someone else. Ask which day they want and schedule with whoever’s here then," because that’s what they offered me. So I asked for Monday or Tuesday.

I got the nurse I talked to at the pediatrician’s office to promise to fill out the form so that the school can give Cordelia her scheduled painkillers at 11 a.m. every day. I will give her Tylenol at 7 a.m., right when she gets up for school, and then again when she gets home a little after 3 p.m.

Cordelia still needs a lot of help to sit down, but she’s getting closer to being able to stand up without help. She can do it in the bathroom because we’ve got a stool to hold her leg up while she levers herself up. Getting up from the couch is harder because we haven’t figured out a way to do something similar. She can’t sit for even a second without having her leg raised, and she can’t hold it up under her own power. Using her hands, means she can’t use the crutches. Cordelia’s having problems with her hip flexors on the injured leg going really tight, painfully so, and I’m not sure what to do about it. None of the stretches I know that might help would be safe or even feasible. Right now, we’re putting ice on the knee and heat right at the hip.

Our cleaning lady came today and has been clearing things out of the way so that Cordelia has space to move safely. I asked her to carry pretty much everything down to the basement, and she did. I’m sure we’ll end up missing a few things that weren’t supposed to be in those boxes but had gotten stacked there to get it out of the way, but most of it was stuff we wanted to get rid of or ought to get rid of.

At any rate, I really want to go to bed now, and it’s only a little after 5:00 p.m.