This past week was spent in Dallas for Aiden's surgery. We arrived Tuesday afternoon and checked Ricky into the Ronald McDonald House before Aiden and I were to head to the hospital for his overnight sleep study. After getting our room, we let Aiden play at the park and in the toy room, while we kept a watchful eye on the news tracking the severe weather headed towards Dallas. They were throwing out words like "baseball-size hail" and "widespread tornados". Wonderful.
The kitchen was filling with smells of dinner being prepared by Southwest Airlines as we decided whether to stick around for the complimentary meal or get to the hospital to avoid driving in it. As the big storm blob moved across the radar screen, we determined we'd have enough time to fill our tummies and immediately leave for the hospital afterwards.
Ricky dropped us off at Medical City as the sky turned several shades darker. After registration, we made it up to the sleep center to start our night. Because this area is designed for people to have their sleep monitored without interruption, there are no windows, televisions or other distractions. In other words, I had no idea what the conditions were like outside.
That is, until a security alert blared through the hospital's loud speakers.
"ATTENTION, ATTENTION, CODE GRAY WARNING"
We were all hurried into the hallway of the 4th floor.
Aiden had thrown a mega-sized tantrum when we were trying to hook the electrodes all over his head so the technician had decided to let him calm down before trying again. He totally wore himself out and fell sound asleep in my arms. Normally this would not have been a good scenario, but in this case, it turned out to be better so that we didn't have to stop an already started test by unhooking all of the wires for our move out to the hallway.
From what I could tell by refreshing my iPhone's weather app over and over, it's probably a good thing that I couldn't see what was going on outside. Sirens were going off and tornado warnings were everywhere - the hospital location was directly in the path of the worst of it. I checked in with Ricky every so often, who had been moved to a storage room along with all of the rest of those residing at the Ronald McDonald House.
After about an hour, we finally got the all-clear to go back to our room. Aiden slept through the entire thing which made it a bit easier to get the test going, although he still protested the attaching of the electrodes on his head through a sleepy haze.
In true sleep study fashion...we got no sleep. Ironic, I know. Well, Aiden slept okay aside from the fits he'd have every few hours when he'd wake up and realize how uncomfortable he was. As for me, I basically laid awake waiting for it to JUST BE 5 O'CLOCK ALREADY.
I have to admit I was more than a little rattled from the bad weather that night. I've always been a bit scared at the mention of tornadoes (okay a lot scared, who am I kidding). Mix that with the recent events in Joplin, MO and Tuscaloosa, AL and you can imagine I had only the worst in my head. Luckily, it seems that although numerous funnel clouds were spotted very close to where we were, none were reported to have touched down or caused any significant damage.
I've never been more happy to have a sleep study behind us. Next up - Aiden's pre-op appointments.
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