Yup, you read that title correctly. Last Saturday evening, Avery and I embarked on one of the most exhausting nights that we have had so far on our Autism adventure. Let me add some context.

Avery is five years old now and is still in diapers, which, you guessed it! Sucks. Sadly the whole change-your-massive-sized-kid every two seconds isn't the worst part, we are only just a drop in the bucket of families that deal with that. Its the fact that Avery's body does not WANT to be in diapers anymore! So she gets bladder infections about every 4-6 months, this has been happening for about three years. During this time, Jason and I have been around the bladder infection block- like, a weird amount of times.

Avery's primary doctor recognizes the same red flags that we do, and knows exactly the best route for a urine sample. Again, because its not our first rodeo. HOWEVER there have been two times that Avery couldn't wait to get in to see her primary so I made the decision to take her to urgent care. The first time was an absolute mess, so you can only imagine how excited I was for the second time around. Those red flags that I'm talking about- they are like your basic symptoms - just look em up. I am by NO means a doctor, but I do know how Avery ticks at this point. (Well, to a certain degree... ha)

Side note- my disclaimer before I tell the story, if anyone is even still reading, is that all of the medical providers out there are the bomb- and I'm super glad that there are people willing to do that job! So don't read this in the best "Pissed-off mom voice" that you can muster up, because that is not the case!

Avery got really whiney on Saturday afternoon and by bedtime she was not having ANY of it. Generally when she gets sick or works herself into a frenzy I'm able to put some of her medicine into her juice. The only problem that night was that she's realized that when she drinks, she pees- and that sucks. So she just straight up stopped consuming anything. I even tried putting Tylenol in an otter pop! By 8:30 PM she was running a fever of 101.8 degrees and had been crying for about an hour straight. Also, lucky for us, it was one of the hottest days in the history of like, ever in Washington that day so she was majorly dehydrated from playing outside. All of these things combined led me to take her to the emergency room. Which seemed silly. Because it was a bladder infection, I was SURE of it. (Every 4-6 months, remember?)

When we arrived at the ER, Avery was immediately pissed because we go to the same hospital for Occupational Therapy, which is her favorite, and I think she might trade in her whole family to hang with her OT all day. So you can imagine the fall out that happened when we passed by the "fun" door, and headed to the one with all of the craziness in line ahead of us.

People give us MAD props for taking on Avery. Which sometimes seems silly, because we adopted her for a reason! She's our kid and we love her and all of the straws that come with her. But also, I don't love pulling the Autism card all the time. Don't worry, I definitely use it, especially if it's going to get me through the lines faster at Disneyland. (Sorry not sorry!) But while I stood there in line, regretting the choice not to change Avery out of her footie pajamas because now I'm stuck carrying a child that is 20 feet long, I was deciding how to go about pulling the Autism card when I got up to the registration desk. The only thing I knew for certain was that I am at these people's mercy, and I didn't want to come off as one of those stereotypical special needs moms that you see portrayed on TV. You know the ones. Because i'll tell you what, we definitely did NOT need more special treatment than the lady in front of us with blood spewing from her head.

When we got called in to the triage room, I tried to explain our situation as accurately as I could, while dropping little hints here and there about how I am CERTAIN its a bladder infection and that we just need antibiotics. And I mean I get it, they can't just be giving out antibiotics all willy-nilly up in there! At the end of the day, I guess I was just hoping that we could skip the first few steps to getting a urine sample and get to the part that would actually be successful. Again, without coming off like a know-it-all, because I do NOT. You try being a Karen, without trying to come off as a Karen! Not easy!

Low and behold, we were sent back to the waiting room with a popsicle to hopefully get Avery to pee. Which by the way, wasn't going to happen. Eventually we got moved back to our own room. Which again, felt silly, because a bladder infection doesn't seem super Emergency Room worthy.

The nicest nurse came in and offered me the pee catching bag to put into her diaper next- which I could prove to you via text message screenshots- I called before even getting called back. I politely told him that we haven't had success with one before, but I am more than willing to give it a shot if it moves us along. 45 minutes later he came back and had me check on the bag. No dice. AND THEN this amazing man was willing to try to squeeze pee out of her wet diaper into a vile to take to the lab. Which is like, super gross. He needs a pay raise. After retrieving about a quarter of a tsp of urine, he ran it down to the lab, with the disclaimer that he didn't think anything would come of it. Another 45 minutes later, the lab concluded that there was not enough to test. Okay, deep breaths Bekah. You have 40% remaining on the tablet and one bag of Goldfish to get you through the rest of the night. You can do this!

Next the doctor comes in to let us know that he's order this nose spray stuff to knock Avery out so that they could do a catheter-retrieval. Okay. Its four hours down and this is JUST happening. Its fine, everyone needs an adventure every once in a while.

It takes about 30 minutes before two nurses come in to administer the nasal spray stuff. It then took ten minutes to kick in. Which like, what even is this stuff? Do they sell it at Walmart?

Ten minutes later they came back, confirmed that she was now one 20 foot long slump of a sleeping kid, and began the catheter process. I was finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel when all of a sudden; Avery turned into like a sleepy HULK with autism super strength. Im pretty sure the poor pee-squeezer nurse got a foot to the face, where is his pay raise?! At this point they asked if I wanted to proceed or try the nasal spray again. I don't know if my decision was more to protect myself or Avery. We both wanted out of there as quickly as we could. And after seeing Avery gag on that gross nose spray, I told the nurse to just do it as quickly as she could. Poor Avery was mad that she had to fight an overwhelming sleepy feeling and now two people holding her down. I always cry when I have to hold her down. For shots, eye dilation, anything. It just makes me so sad that I can't verbally prepare her for anything, I don't think its fair. So yup, I cried. Pee-squeezer had to think I was crazy at this point. But also, it was 1:45 AM! Give me a break.

Pee in hand, the nurses left. 45 minutes later the doctor came back in and told me that Avery had very infected urine...... I had to give myself another little pep talk. *These people don't know our situation, we could be just a another family trying to work the system. Don't roll your eyes. Don't roll your eyes. Don't roll you eyes. And oh my gosh DO NOT SAY I TOLD YOU SO. Don't be a jerk. Deep breath. Also, don't look at the time, that'll make you cry even more.*

I couldn't decide if I wanted to hug him or yell at him when he finally prescribed the antibiotics.

By 2:27 AM I was carrying a passed out Avery through the emergency room waiting room, where I was getting a mixture of sad smiles because I had a footie-pajama-ed kid in my arms and glares because we were finally busting out of there. And then by 2:53 I was pulling into our driveway, thinking about the fact that I would never let Avery get a bladder infection on a weekend ever again. Like ever. Her primary doctor would have had antibiotics to us within an hour of a phone call to the office. HOWEVER- given the fact that there are rules in the medicine world, more than I could ever comprehend, we are extremely grateful that they were patient and took good care of Avery.

Its been 48 hours and she's got a pep in her step again. So really I'm just being dramatic. It was an absolute mess of a night, and the prideful side of me wants to pout because I wouldn't have had to deal with a crying kid at the hospital all night if she didn't have autism, or at least if she could talk and understand what is needed from her to get some relief. Everyone has their junk, and I know that, but this mom loves a good soap-box! I don't even know how you people are still reading at this point. Thank you for reading, and hopefully for not rolling your eyes at my silly problems, its much appreciated! Also, I don't cry often. But if you do ever catch me at a breaking point, Dutch Bros helps. Or like a vacation, without kids. Thanks.