Surprise! Back to the hospital

This was not a restful weekend.

As I noted last week, Nathaniel was not feeling well on Wednesday ... another ear infection.

On Thursday, his fever went higher. On Friday morning, it went even higher: 104 degrees. Then, even though his fever was down to 101, he threw up his breakfast -- so I decided I needed to visit the doctor again.

The doctor, noting Nathaniel's early-life problems, suggested we get an X-ray to take a closer look at his chest. They wanted to make sure he didn't have pneumonia. The doctor suggested we go back down to Delaware, where Nathaniel had his surgery, because they were most familiar with his case and would be able to handle any issues.

So, I took him on down to Delaware. And his x-ray was just fine.

But ...

the oxygen in his blood was a little low. This is the number doctors were most concerned with after he was born. Before surgery, the number was in the 70s. After surgery, it spiked into the low 90s. And they wouldn't let us go home until it sat in the upper 90s regularly.

But now it was back down into the low 90s, and doctors were worried. Which scared the hell out of Amanda and me. Nathaniel was admitted to the hospital.

The thing is, they didn't actually do anything to him/for him. He had oxygen tubes in his nose for a while, but he ripped them out mid-evening Friday and they didn't bother to put them back in. Instead, they just watched the numbers, as did we. Then, about 6 p.m. Saturday, they told us we could go.

That was it.

After Nathaniel was pretty much housed in a cage for most of 24 hours (we could take him out, but it was still a cage) and after Amanda and I were scared, exhausted and bored out of our minds, they said to go home.

So now we're trying to get Nathaniel into a normal schedule in the days before Christmas. And we haven't had the slightest chance to get the house in order or get a Christmas tree or put up lights outside. And we're exhausted. And Nathaniel's exhausted -- but happy to be home, so he's having trouble falling asleep.

Like I said, this was not a restful weekend.