In a word: Frustrating.

You all know how toddlers are, right? Especially two-year-olds...even on a normal day, they're irrational and often prone to fits of rage (if yours isn't, you'll have to tell me your secret). So Brandt is all of that, but he doesn't cry, he screams--always has, and it drives me to distraction even when we aren't in the hospital trying to access an IV or change his dressing. And today, his fits of rage have been non-stop and hard to decipher. All day long it was a continuous cycle of: wake up from short nap screaming and angry, demand to be held, throw a fit while we maneuver all the tubes and wires to make that happen, then sit still for roughly thirty seconds before squirming and squawking angrily because he can't get comfortable. Continue the last for two hours, with intermittent fear/anger outbursts when the nurses come in to do their things, then finally fall asleep again for another short nap.

It's rough. And the worst part is that it started at 5 this morning when they woke him up for his X-ray and had only just finished at 7 when Wade and I left. Let it be noted that I'm exhausted.

Of course, we spent the whole day trying to decode his irritability. In pain? Eh, maaaaybe. Tylenol helped minimally, stronger meds knocked him out for short spells, but neither actually fixed it.

We tried changing the dressing around his older tube. Nope.

We tried taking him to the play room, thinking he was maybe just going stir-crazy. He might have been, but he was too busy being miserable to play with anything for more than 30 seconds at a time.

Playing the iPad? Meh.

Food? He ate, but that didn't fix it either.

Finally we realized it was most likely his newest tube. I forgot to get a picture of it, so I'll have to try to describe it well enough for a visual. For some reason, the tech that placed it (I have yet to come up with a strong enough word for his idiocy) used a short tube with a large valve at the end of it in such a way that we can turn off the flow of fluid...which is exactly the opposite of what we'd want to do...and then attached the normal drain tube to the end of that. There's also--and this part is truly baffling--an IV access point on that valve, exactly like the ones they have hanging off of his arms to hook his drips up to. You know, because we really need IV access...to a drain. Just thinking about it makes me do the "stupid squint".

We didn't notice any of this at first because they had bandaged it all up, but Brandt ended up pulling out a wad of gauze out of it today that revealed the whole problem. After placing that contraption, the tech doubled the tube back on Brandt's abdomen, so that the valve sat right on his side, then looped around again before it was allowed to hang free. Not only did that cause it to kink in multiple places and not allow it to drain, but the valve had been chafing and digging into his side for the last 18 hours. No wonder he was so ticked off about life.

We ended up fixing that as well as we could right before we left, so it hopefully won't be a problem in the morning. But the major frustration is that we spent all day trying to fix this one issue that didn't have to be an issue in the first place.

Anyway. Hitting the reset button, and trying again tomorrow.

(And once again, it won't load my pictures. Sorry!)