Saturday night at the ER as a parent: coughs, fevers and frayed nerves

This First Person column is the experience of Bailey White, a CBC journalist and a motherwho lives in St. John's. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please seethe FAQ.

"He has a fever and his breathing is shallow," I tell the nurse standing on the other side of a retractable nylon belt.

My son, 17 months old, is draped across my shoulder, flushed and motionless. His father and my husband is in the car. Only one of us is allowed in. It's Saturday night at the Janeway Children's Health and Rehabilitation Centre in St. John's.

The last thing my husband did before leaving work the day before was write a story on this very websiteabout high patient volumes in the children's emergency room.Officials had saidwheneverpossible, parents should take kids to their family doctor not the ER.

"More than 40 breaths a minute," I tell the nurse. The 811 nurse we spoke to on the phone earlier that night said ifour son took more than 40 a minute to see a doctor right away. We counted 44.

"That's to be expected if a child has a fever," this nurse tells me.

I'm still unsure if we need to be at the hospital. But the nurse shrugs and says, "Let's get you triaged. Take off his coat so we can check his vitals."

Estimated wait time: 4 hours

We take a seat in the waiting room facing a Peter Pan mural. Thomas the Tank Engine is on TV. A man strides toward the nursing station from somewhere behind me.

He wants to know how much longer before his kid is seen.

Right nowthe estimated wait time is four hours, another nurse explains.

"Other kids who came in after us have already been seen," he responds.

She tells him that it's all about how the children present, and how serious their symptoms are.

"You don't have to be rude about it," he answers, turning on his heels back toward a little girl lying across three seats.

In front of me, a teenage girl sits alone in Tinkerbell pyjama pants tucked into wool socks. Across the aisle, a woman with a tiny baby asleep in her arms sits next to a man flanked by two boys in masks.Everyone is wearing a mask, except for the baby and my little guy.

For the first year of his life, our son was never sick. He is a pandemic baby. He did not get out much. Thenhe went to daycare and he got all kinds of bugs. Pink eye, stomach stuff, hand, foot and mouth. Incredibly, miraculously, not COVID-19.None of us have had it, but we know it's coming.

Now, watching his little belly heave under his dinosaur pyjamas, we fear he has respiratory syncytial virus RSV. Or pneumonia. Perhapsbronchitis. We've never seen him like this.

The triage nurse says his oxygen saturation is great, and his breathing sounds fine. His blood pressure is normal. His fever is mild.

"So, should we stay?" I ask her.

"Well, you're here now," she answers.

iPads, storybooks, Cheerios

In the waiting room, my son lies on my shoulder and I can't see his face. I ask the teenager in front of us to check if he's asleep. She says no. It's about 6:45 p.m., which is when he typically starts getting ready for bed.

Behind me there's a tow-headed boy, maybe eight, curled on his side, watching videos on an iPad. His mom makes a FaceTime call so the boy's brother and his dad can say hello."I miss you," the brother tells the boy in the waiting room.

His mother tells his father that it shouldn't be much longer. There aren't many children left who've been here as long as them.

My own son is starting to perk up. He slides off my shoulder and starts looking through my backpack. He pulls out a cup full of Cheerios and eats them by the fistful. Peppa Pig is on TV.

I feel his head much cooler. The Tylenol we gave him earlier is working. He seems so much more like himself already. If I have to wake him every four to six hours to give him more medicine, that'd be all right, I think.

We have another bottle of Tylenol at home one my mother saw in Wabush when she was there a few months ago. She bought it because she knew there was a shortage.

The man sitting next to me has a daughter who's had a fever for many days. He calls his wife to say that there are signs warning only one parent is allowed in the waiting room, but after the day they've had and everything they've been through, she should just come inanyway.

I have no idea what they've been through.

A few minutes later, the mother shows up, and reads a chapter book with the girl in her lap.

Around me, a choir of coughing children, hacking in harmony. I worry that if we stay here, we'll catch something. COVID-19. RSV. The flu.

Will it always be like this?

Is this how we live now? Crowded emergency rooms full of red-cheeked children and terrified parents?

Later, I'll tell my moms group chat about this experience and they'll each respond with their stories of endlessly sick children. Kids who are catching everything, who can't sleep through the night.A colleague tells me the old joke was that the Janeway is the hospital "for six kids" a famously calm and quiet place.

But on this Saturday night, there are a dozen or more kids waiting to be seen.Is it just a bad cold-and-flu season, compounded by staff shortages and the pandemic? Or has something changed?

Sometimes I worry that the world from before is gone for good. That one night, while we were all sleeping, the old world was replaced with a new one that is colder and less forgiving.

A man, womanand toddler appear from the back of the waiting room. They must have come from somewhere else in the hospital. The man carries the child, who looks to be about the same age as mine. They explain to the nurse that the child fell down and lost consciousness for a time.

My son is pulling tissues out of a box and dropping Cheerios on the floor. I pack up our things and help him into his coat. I tell the woman working the registration we're going home.

Please, I think, don't let him get sicker for having come here.

Do you have a similar experience to this First Person column? We want to hear from you. Write to us atfirstperson@cbc.ca.

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