When I opened my Timeh.op this
morning to see what cute picture I had taken of Baby Girl this date last year
and the year before, I was jolted back to this day one year ago…
I had dropped her off at
daycare like any other day. She was
sweet and cute and smiley. I had been
working for about half an hour or so when my cell phone rang. I saw the daycare’s number on the screen and
knew something must be up. We will name
the daycare provider CJ. CJ proceeds to
tell me that my sweet girl has a fever of 101.5 and that I should come and get
her. Drats. It’s up to me because BJ is on a big job that
he was starting that very morning and he had all of his equipment on site and
he wasn’t really reachable. So I finished
up a few quick things and started on my way.
About 15 minutes into my
journey, (after I left BJ a message that I was going to pick BG up) my phone
rang again. It was CJ. My heart skipped a beat as I shakily said
hello. This is what she said:
Yeah, something isn’t right. I think I’m going to have to call 911. BG is lethargic and not really responsive.
My heart sank and my stomach
turned. My mouth went dry and my breaths
became quick and shallow. I told her to
definitely call the ambulance and that I was on my way. I told her I’d call BJ again. I could barely concentrate on anything. I began crying and begging God not to take my
baby from me. I called BJ and left him another
message. My next thought was to call my
sister in law because she lives very close to daycare and I wanted someone from
the family with her until I could get there.
I called and got her voicemail.
And then I lost reception and was cut off before my message was
complete. I dialed again. She answered and I hurriedly told her the
situation and asked her to go over there.
She left right away. BJ called me
and I had to tell him everything again because he didn’t listen to his
message. He was leaving the worksite and
heading to the hospital. I called CJ to
see what was happening, and so did BJ.
It was a frantic 45 minutes after that.
There were so many phone calls going back and forth between everyone. CJ quickly told me that BG seemed ok but she
could tell that BG didn’t feel good.
They were playing outside and CJ was holding her. She put BG in a small chair while she tended
to another child. When she turned around
BG was slumped over and she thought she fell asleep. Her eyes were slightly rolling backwards and
she was pretty limp.
My SIL rode with BG to the hospital. She was talking to me while on the way. I’m crying and can hardly focus on the cars
around me. I was trying to keep myself
aware of my speed. I told her that BG
had fallen the previous day and busted her lip on the hardwood floor but that
she was fine after that. I mentioned a
bug bite she had on her lower back. I
was trying to think of anything important to tell them. My mind was racing. I gripped the steering wheel so tight my
hands ached. I was holding that steering
wheel like I wish I had been holding my daughter. I remember just begging and begging God to
let her be ok and not to take her from me.
I finally arrived at the ER
and went to the front desk. I was told
she was in the waiting room. What? I
hurried over there and my SIL was holding BG and BJ was filling out
papers. BG didn’t even raise her head
when she saw me. She didn’t reach for
me. Nothing. It was like she didn’t even know who I was or
that I was there. I was so scared when I
saw what condition she was in. She was
drooling on my SIL’s shoulder. I took
her and held her. She was dead weight in
my arms. I asked what the hell was going
on and why wasn’t she being seen? I went
to the check in desk and told them that they needed to get someone to look at
her because something was very wrong.
They sent someone out and
thankfully it was an old friend of BJ’s.
I frantically but coherently told him that something was very wrong
because this was not my child. It took
some hemming and hawing but I finally got him to agree to take her vitals
again. They had said she was stable in
the ambulance so they weren’t rushing her treatment. Her temp had gone down a little but her
heartrate was up. And she didn’t even
care that they were messing with her.
This child can’t stand when strangers touch her or even look at her so I
knew something was very wrong.
We spent the next several
hours talking to staff, holding my girl down so they could put the urine
catcher on her lady parts (that was awful), forcing Motr.in and Tylen.ol down
her throat (she finally started fighting back), wrapping her up like a burrito
so they could draw blood and start an IV of fluids. They decided to do a chest x-ray. They wheeled us down to the x-ray room on the
bed. They asked me if there was a chance
I was pregnant and my answer was yes (more on that later) so I could not go in
with her. It killed me to be away from
her. I was standing in the hall for less
than 5 minutes but it felt like an eternity.
She was inside that room and I couldn’t hear or see anything. When the door opened, BJ was holding her and
she was wearing a hospital gown. She was
the cutest little patient I had ever seen. And she SAW me. She REACHED for me. She was ALERT. I don’t know what happened but she seemed to
be getting better. I took her in my arms
and just squeezed her.
Back in the room they gave us
a bottle with some water in it. She
started drinking it and she even smiled and acted a little goofy. Her poor arm was wrapped in one of those hard
plastic things to keep her from getting to her IV and bending her arm. She didn’t like it very much but she was a
trooper.
Everything came back
normal. They looked in her eyes and her
ears and they said that she had a bit of an ear infection. Then they told us she was dehydrated and they
were sending her home. Um. Ok.
She was drooling and crying real tears and she filled her diaper and her
fluid catcher…that doesn’t sound like dehydration to me but whatever. They didn’t find anything else and told us to
see her Ped the next day. BJ went back
to his job site while I waited for us to be released. They thought that maybe she had a seizure
from her fever but they never confirmed that and I guess there’s no way to
accurately prove it. She was never
shaking or twitching, just lethargic and non-responsive.
CJ came by our house that
evening and recounted everything that happened that morning. She said that BG drank plenty of milk that
morning with her breakfast so she didn’t know where that diagnosis came from,
either. I was so touched that CJ wanted
to come over and check on BG. She had
been so scared, too. In 14 years of
being a provider she had never had to call 911.
Leave it to us, right?
The Ped saw BG the next
morning and was confused as to why they said she was dehydrated, too. He said her numbers were a little low but
that it did not constitute dehydration.
Hmph Stupid ER. He checked her out and did a few tests on her
to gauge her mental state and seemed happy with all of her responses. He also said that her ear was a little pink
but not much.
Needless to say, that was the
scariest day of motherhood so far for me (at that time…more to come). BG has had much higher fevers since then and
has never had that reaction. Her Ped
thinks it was some sort of neurological episode but without a recurrence we
will never really know what happened that day.
Thanks to Timeh.op I just relived that whole experience. It makes me want to shudder. I thought for sure that God was going to take
her from me and I was so far away from her that she would “go” without her mama
by her side. I was certain that day that
the dreaded other shoe was
falling. I love that little girl more
than my own life and I am forever grateful to have her and that she is healthy.
