Long night in the ER with the Bean

The Bean and her pediatrician (not a photo from the hospital last night)

The Bean was restless last night, waking up several times in a row. Sometime around 1:30am, she coughed and cried out, and wouldn’t settle back down. I picked her up to bring her to our bed thinking she just needed to be snuggled, and she was struggling with me a little. Suddenly, she started to throw up, but then just gagged. I sat down with her on the toilet seat to give her space to throw up if she needed to, and she just gagged again and then passed out. She was totally limp and it seemed like she wasn’t breathing. So scary!

I put her on the bathmat to give her a breath and check for stuff in her throat while my Sweetie called 911. By the time he was giving them our info, about 20 seconds later, she was breathing again and crying. Within 5 minutes, the house was full of rescue people (4 firemen, 2 paramedics and a sheriff). Since she was breathing again, they just asked questions while I comforted the Bean, and then to be on the safe side we went in the ambulance to the hospital. The Bean proceeded to vomit up her dinner all over me and herself (lovely), over the course of a couple of hours. They did an EKG first, which was a challenge because the machine decided to play games with us. They then had to catheterize my poor Bean to get a urine sample. That was awful. She fought tooth and nail and they had to get two nurses plus me to hold her down so the third nurse could get the catheter in.

It took a while for the lab tech to come to draw blood, and in the meantime, Bean had fallen asleep.  She was woken up by a crowd of nurses hovering, ready to help hold her down, and hold her down was what they had to do.  We had a break then while the lab processed the tests and she snoozed again.  The nurse came back with the news that the Bean was very dehydrated and that her white blood cell count was high.  They were going to have to put an IV in her arm to take more blood and give her some fluids. Poor Bean – she was already terrified every time a nurse popped in for any reason because she associates them with pain.  It was quite a job getting the IV in.  I didn’t watch, but there was a fair amount of blood spilled in the process, and she wailed and struggled the whole time.

An hour later, enough of the tests had come back to show that she wasn’t in any immediate danger.  She doesn’t have an infection like they originally suspected.  They theorized that she had eaten something that disagreed with her, choked on her vomit and passed out in the process.  She did ingest some of her diaper contents earlier in the evening, but they didn’t think that had anything to do with it.  We have a follow-up appointment with her pediatrician later today to go over the rest of the test results.  One odd thing is that her platelets have been decreasing over the past few months, affecting her blood’s ability to clot.  We don’t know why right now, but hopefully the doctor will have some info for us this afternoon.

So, we’ve collected another hospital bracelet.

One thing I have to say, though, despite my exhaustion from not having slept at all last night, is that every person we encountered last night was wonderful.  The paramedic has a 4-year-old daughter, and he was so great with the Bean.  He presented her with a cute stuffed bunny, and at the hospital obtained a second id bracelet and attached it around the bunny’s leg.  She was so much more interested in the bunny after that.

The main nurse in charge of the Bean’s case also has a 3-year-old son who has medical special needs.  He was just as wonderful, despite the many challenges in dealing with the Bean’s tests.  We chatted about our kids while he filled out paperwork.  All the assisting nurses were so sweet and helpful.  The doctor was a gentle giant: tall, muscular and extremely kind and soft-spoken.

I certainly didn’t like having to be in the ER overnight, but we had such kindness and support surrounding us that it made the whole experience manageable.  Here’s hoping we all get some sleep today.