Scare

*Warning....child mentioned*


Oh, where do I begin? Yesterday morning I went into my daughter's room around 8:30. She is our alarm clock, and that was a bit late for her to be waking up. When I walked in she was standing in the middle of the room in a daze saying "I can't walk, will you carry me?" I sat down on the floor, she climbed into my lap and promptly fell asleep...sound asleep. My first thought...well that is odd. Then for the next 20 minutes, I try to wake her up. She had moments where she was awake, but they didn't last very long. She even fell asleep in the middle of a sentence.

There are two routes that I will typically take in a crisis involving family, over reacting or under reacting. As a nurse, I will often assess the situation and usually come away with "She'll be fine". I also come from a family where my father's motto was "It doesn't hurt if it's not bleeding". Let's just say that in general I am not quick to turn to medical help, after all I AM medical help right? Well, this thinking is seriously flawed for a couple of reasons. The first being that when it is my child or family member, I usually turn into an idiot and my assessment skills are impaired. The second reason is that I am a Labor and Delivery nurse, so pediatric illness/injuries is not my forte.

So after about 20 minutes of the flaccid somnolent child, I decide to call her doctor. Big surprise - she wants me to take her to the ER. As we are packaging her up (it was 20 degrees outside) she almost collapses. I immediately start thinking that there is something neurological going on, she's sort of acting like she has a concussion. And I'm really hoping that pre-school didn't somehow miss a child who had a severe enough accident to sustain a traumatic brain injury.

She stayed awake on the drive over, and I thought about turning around and going back home. But there was something that was just not "right". She continued to act groggy, but not as lethargic as she had earlier. When we get to the ER and go through registration, they almost tried to send me back to the waiting room, but there was no way I was going to wait a minute longer before someone other than me assessed her. She got through triage without lifting her head off my shoulder. Next is the history - recent illnesses, complaints, new foods, exposure to illnesses etc.....her history is benign expect for the previous 1.5 hours.

So then comes the IV and the bloodwork and trying to get a urine specimen. She was amazing. The only time she cried was when I told her not to pull on her IV. C met us at the ER with portable DVD in hand. We watched "Ala.din" and "Chick.en Run". After 5 hours the verdict was "moderate dehydration". She received a bolus of IV fluids, she had lots to drink and 3 popsicles and she was a new girl. I have no idea how or why she was dehydrated. By 5 pm she was running and jumping around like nothing was ever wrong. By the way she was acting, you'd never have known that just 8 hours earlier I was crying hysterically (but only briefly) while I put on a baseball cap and quickly smeared on some deodorant. I called out from work, but then felt guilty because she was acting just fine. Of course now it is 4 am and I am now feeling guilty because I am not at home.

So she will be under the watchful eye of my husband this weekend, as work Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. On an amusing note, the ER told us that since our last visit, they always put chocolate syrup in the charcoal when treating a child...although now they have added a dollop of vanilla ice cream.