If you have been following me on Facebook or Twitter then you know that Caden has been hospitalized since Friday. He has never completely kicked the pneumonia from his last hospitalization in August that was initially caused by H1N1 (Swine Flu). Caden’s condition is improving and I expect he may get off oxygen sometime tomorrow. God willing and the creek don’t rise Caden should not have to stay past Tuesday.
I know you are probably wondering what is up with the title of this post. Well Sherry was taking her turn with Caden today while I took our birthday boy out for some fun. Riley turned seven today. Wow! Seven!
…Anyway a nurse showed up to Caden’s room with a new oral (g-tube) medication that no one had ordered. That’s right, not a single mention on Caden’s chart about this drug. I looked at the chart myself. The drug was a generic of Zantac called Ranitidine. The dose was even more odd so I am hoping this is just some kind of electronic mix up. This particular medicine is delivered in syrup form at 15mg/ml. The dose brought into Caden’s room with his name, patient id, and DOB was only .33 ml which means it was only 5mg of the drug in total. After a look on RxList.com I found that the lowest recommended dose is 2-4mg/kg. That is an amount of medicine to child weight ratio. Caden weighs 21kg(Approx 46 lbs) so he would need a dose of somewhere between 2.6 ml – 5.2 ml of the syrup based on 2-4mg/kg. To reverse this calculation for the meds that showed up…the .33ml would have been the correct dose for a baby between 1.25 and 2.5kg. [are you following all the math?] Here’s the bottom line. The dose of Zantac that the nurse brought into Caden’s room tonight would be the correct dose for a 2.75 – 5.5lbs baby. This ward of the MUSC children’s hospital doesn’t even take babies that small so this dose was most likely not just labeled for the wrong kid.
So the moral of this story is that we have once again validated the absolute necessity for parents to stay with their children at all times while they are hospitalized. This medication would have been harmless and would have caused no problems for Caden. But what if the meds had been something more powerful and had also been written for a kid four times his size. The nurse got the meds from the pharmacy and the label had all the numbers that matched Caden’s ID bracelet. Scary stuff.
We have already had somewhat of a doctor whipper snapper type run in with a resident caring for Caden. They have been running rabbit trails and can’t really give us a good reason why. It’s like they don’t trust that we are seeing all the specialist that Caden needs to see even though they can look at Caden’s appointment schedule in the computer and see that we have clinic visits scheduled with everyone they have asked about. I may just have to rattle off the list of clinics that Caden has seen regularly: Cardiology, Endocrinology, ENT(x3), Craniofacial, Orthopedics, Immunology, Dentist, Speech (x2), OT, PT, and EI. He has previously seen Genetics, GI, Storm Eye, to name a few. I am sure I missed a few as Caden has seen some of these clinics in multiple locations for second opinions. We end to CHoP (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) for Orthopedics (scoliosis), ENT, and Genetics. He has also seen the Genetics clinic in Greenwood, SC. I think we have been doing a pretty good job of getting Caden in front of the right specialist as needed.
[End Soapbox]
I thank you all for praying for a little Caden. Please also keep Riley and Josiah in your prayers. This is the second birthday party in a row in our family that has been interrupted by a hospitalization. Caden and I will not get to attend Riley’s party at the park tomorrow for lunch. Riley was very disappointed to hear this news today. He will have plenty of his homeschool friends there so I am sure he will have fun anyway.