Wednesday, Jun. 28, 2006 - 1:28 p.m.

Our First Parental Medical Emergency

New Page 1

I have said it over and over again, am well aware of it, and do NOT take it for granted that Tarik and I are very VERY lucky with regard to our child and his health and happiness.  Having said that, yesterday, we had our first major health emergency that required a trip to the emergency room, then a transfer to Memorial Hermann Children's' Hospital in the med center.

I shuffled Travis off to his grandmother's for the day yesterday so that I could get some much needed chores and projects done without distraction.  At approximately 2:00 in the afternoon, g-ma calls to say that Travis has gotten into her diabetes testing and meds kit, and got it open.  When she took it from him, she noticed he was sitting on some pills.  Well, she checked his mouth to see if perhaps he had swallowed any and saw nothing in his mouth to indicate that he had, meaning bits of the pills or white residue from the pill coating.  However, she went ahead and called poison control to ask them about the toxicity of the pills (glucocimide or glucosimine, I can't remember which) he may or may not have ingested, and they told us to get to the closest ER as soon as possible, as those pills could kill him.  For a diabetic, they lower blood sugar, but gradually, in a baby, they can cause a sudden crash in blood sugar and coma.  She brought him back here, picked me up, and we took him to the ER.  He was acting perfectly fine, and being himself.  But, poison control said that is what he WOULD be doing until the meds took effect.  They instructed us to give him some sugar in the interim.

At the ER, he was placed on this board that had extremely large velcro straps that basically enveloped him to keep him restrained so he could be worked on.  He looked like a little mummy.  One arm was free, and in this arm they inserted an IV line which was to be used to take blood from him periodically.  I lost it seeing him wrapped up in this contraption.  It was horrible.  And of course when they stuck the IV into him he screamed and cried, but only for a moment, and then he was OK.  He was so, so good.  Just as they were finishing this up, another urgent emergency came in and we were shuffled off into another room where he was supposed to be given some chocolate milk with activated charcoal.  One hour later he was administered this.  I was perturbed that there was a seeming lack of personnel in the ER to prepare this concoction at the time.  Here we have a baby who has potential poisoning, and we were just basically abandoned by the staff for an hour.  Eventually they did give it to him, I felt too late to have done any good should it have been needed, and it was NOT something he enjoyed.  The chocolate milk was black from the charcoal and made his teeth look black.  It was messy.

We were told that he would need to be observed for at least 12 hours so we were going to be transferred to Memorial Hermann Children's Hospital for the night.  The ambulance picked us up around 7:30 pm.  We went straight up to the room, got settled, and then about an hour or so later the resident came in to take a look.  They had apparently talked to poison control right before coming in to see us, and were told that if Travis had not shown any signs or his blood sugar had never dropped below normal levels by this time, then he was fine, and he was comfortable sending us home.  He, however, wanted to run it by his boss first before giving final word.  His boss said since it was almost 10:00 pm by this time and since we were already there, we should go ahead and stay the night.  They took the IV line out of Travis' arm, and he was none the worse for it.

I don't know WHAT got into him, but he was up til midnight and I was about to pull my hair out because I needed to get some sleep, and had also gone something like 10 or 11 hours between meals.  G-ma was with us and then my sister in law showed up later and brought him a balloon, which he LOVES.  It was NOT a good nights' sleep for mommy as he was playing with this new toy for a few hours.  He finally managed to go sleepies, but then of course they would come in during the night and check his vitals.

I didn't like being in a children's hospital.  Even though I knew Travis was fine, there were many, many children there who were not, and that made me extremely sad.

We were discharged this morning.  Suffice it to say, it looks as though he did not take a single one of those pills, but it was scary none-the-less.  I AM a tad perturbed at my Mother in Law that she left the diabetes kit where Travis could get to it.  In addition to the pills there are also sharp pointy pokey things that I don't want him getting into as well.  Hopefully now she will keep a better eye on it.  And again, I am counting our blessings that all is well, and that we are so very lucky.


Song Virus du Jour:  "Baby You Can Drive My Car" ~ The Beatles


Useless Trivia du Jour:  Its Wednesday.  Time for YOUR UTDJ submissions!!!


Preggo Craving du Jour:  Fish Taco

3 comments so far
- - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008
More updates on another blog home. - Wednesday, Feb. 06, 2008
Where are my zzzzzz's? - Thursday, Nov. 08, 2007
Halloween '07 - Friday, Nov. 02, 2007
Hallween is All Good! - Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007