ER and Admission

Waiting in the waiting room. Rosy pink cheeks from the fever and no smiles.  :(

Well, here we are, admitted to the hospital.  How fast things change.  Let's chat about the last few days, shall we...
  It all started on Saturday night/Sunday morning.  Sadie was coughing and sounding horrible, but we were managing just fine.  Sunday and Monday she was tired and coughing, but I still didn't think she was bad enough to go to the ER.  Then Monday night after the ball dropped (Happy New Years by the way) I went and checked on Sadie after I put Chloe and Aubrie to bed.  She was burning up.  Checked her temp, 102.7.  "This isn't good".  I gave her some Tylenol and I remembered that I forgot to do her eye drops.  I started to do her eye care and an "episode" happened.  "A seizure?"  It wasn't the jerking and out of control movements that you think of when you hear the word seizure.  It was the eye rolling, and some crazy noise/cry that she's never had.  Sadie was completely out of it after it was over, like she was confused or something. Hmmmm, this REALLY isn't good.  She's never had seizures, but as I have said before, I have been told to expect them.  I was pretty confident that that "episode" was a seizure.  "Crap!  Now what".  Do I go to the ER, do I call her Dr, do I wait until later?  I decided to wait.  Why?  I don't know why.  I just didn't feel like I needed to run to the ER.  Probably cause I knew they were coming, I don't know.  So I watched her all night.  Every couple hours I checked her temp, woke her up, made sure she was ok.  She was doing fine, never got her temp under 100.0, but no more "seizures".
  Tuesday morning her temp was 101.5 and she was not tolerating her food.  "This sucks.  I guess it's time to call the Dr."  So I called the Dr on-call at her pediatricians office thinking they were going to tell me to give her pedialyte and alternate between Motrin and Tylenol.  That was exactly what they said.  Then at the end of the conversation I added "Oh, by the way, Sadie might have had a seizure.  I was told to expect them, so it wasn't that big of a deal, but just thought you should note that in her chart."  The Dr on-call flipped out a little and she said that since she didn't "know" Sadie, that she would feel more comfortable with her going to the ER.  I really didn't think we needed to go, but I wasn't completely against it either, so we went.
   The ER was luckily not that busy (surprising since it was New Years Day) we waited for about 30 minutes and then went back.  They suctioned her and suctioned her and suctioned her.  Poor girl.  She hated every minute of it so she was screaming and with that came very low oxygen saturation's which freaked everyone out, which caused more Dr's, nurses, and respiratory therapists to come in her room.  I knew from past experience in the NICU that when she gets extremely mad she turns a pretty shade of purple and her oxygen saturation goes down. Now that she is older when she just gets mad her "mood spot" (the "stork bite" in the middle of her forehead) just turns red.  She does that, that is her normal.  After I heard some big words thrown around like intubation and c-pap I decided to step in and tell the main Dr and nurse to just leave her alone for a minute and let her catch her breath and calm herself down and I promised them, she will turn her pretty pink color again.  They listened.  Sure enough once they stopped touching her, she calmed down and turned pink.  Thank goodness I was right! However, her oxygen still was not high enough to leave her on room air, so a nasal cannula was applied and became her new best friend.



  After the breathing issue was under control we started chatting about everything else... not eating, high fever, seizure, coughing... The Dr's decided to do a chest x ray, blood work, a lumbar puncture, and to swab her nose to check for certain illnesses.  All the tasks began.  However, as these things were going on I noticed she wasn't acting herself.  She was acting lethargic and letting the staff do what they wanted.  They were poking her for IV access and blood draws, doing her lumbar puncture and she didn't even budge, no cry, no whimper, no arching her back like she does when she gets mad. The more that went on the more concerned I got.  I began to really watch her close.  That is when I realized that she was having seizures, a lot more seizures.  The blank stare type of seizures.  Nothing was getting her attention.  When finally she would turn her eyes and look at me she was so confused looking.  I told the Dr's and that is when they decided to give her a seizure med and admit her to the hospital for the night.

...to be continued