I knew something was wrong today.
Ronan slept until 9:00 a.m., which he never does, and he didn’t want to get out of bed. When I picked him up, he was like a wet noodle. I talked him into moving to the couch, where I laid down his favorite blanket and turned on Star Wars for him. He watched for a bit but didn’t seem interested like he usually does.
I made him his favorite breakfast — eggs and sausage. He didn’t touch it.
Then the bloody nose started.
I calmly grabbed Kleenex and pinched his nose while making him sit up, just like the doctor told me to do. I had Woody get a cold compress to put on the back of his neck. After about 20 minutes, it stopped, and I thought I had things under control. I told Woody to go ahead and leave for The Village (our gym) for the twins’ basketball team draft.
He left, and I continued trying to get Ronan to eat and drink. He was still refusing.
Fifteen minutes later, the blood started pouring again.
I repeated the same steps, but after 20 minutes of not getting it to stop, I grabbed my phone with my one free hand and started calling anyone and everyone. I couldn’t get ahold of Woody, the on-call doctor, friends — nobody was picking up. My calm, cool, collected self was panicking.
I even called 911, and I got a recording that all lines were busy.
WTF?? Really, 911?!?!?!
Finally, I reached Woody and told him to get home. At this point, Ronan was looking very pale and wanted to pass out and fall asleep. We threw him in the car and headed to the hospital. We finally got ahold of the on-call doctor, and he told us we did indeed need to come in.
We sat in the ER forever, and the blood continued.
They tried a saline spray to get it to stop. It worked for about five minutes. Then the blood started pouring again.
Ronan was so brave and calm. He sat on my lap the entire time, resting his head on my shoulder. After about an hour of this, the bleeding finally stopped. Knock on wood.
We are now in a room back on the second floor where they have him receiving platelets and monitoring him because he has a slight fever. He threw up a bunch of blood that he had swallowed, and I thought Woody was going to pass out.
Poor guy. Poor baby.
Ronan seems to be feeling much better after all of this and is now asking for string cheese and just ate a bunch of Otter Pops.
As for me, I’ve decided that most of what I’ve been going through feels like an out-of-body experience. Sometimes I feel like I’m just watching from above. I guess it’s my way of handling it.
I texted little Jack’s mom tonight — the little boy who has the same thing as Ronan. She is one step ahead of me on everything. She said she feels the same way about the out-of-body experience.
I also asked her if I was weird because when I cut off some of Ronan’s hair, I saved some and put it in a plastic baggie. She said she did the exact same thing.
She also said this does get easier — even though it feels like it never will.
Woody is out to dinner with her husband as we speak. We are so grateful to have them to talk to. I hope I can help someone someday the way they are helping us.
Ronan is curled up in his hospital bed asleep. Before he fell asleep, I told him I loved him and that he was my angel.
He just looked at me and smiled.
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