ER Visit

Well I wanted to update my blog regularly in 2014 but I’m sorry the first entry of the new year is about a trip to the ER for my sweet little Ellie.  But thankfully she is going to be okay so here’s a little about our adventure.  Our girls are usually very healthy (knock on wood) and this was the first time we’ve had to take either one to the ER.

 Our usual nighttime routine involves putting Ellie to bed around 7 p.m. and then around 9:30 p.m. or so each night she wakes screaming for me to come nurse her.  Sunday night 9:30 came and went and she didn’t wake up.  Occasionally she wakes a little later so I didn’t think anything of it.  Around 10:15 p.m. I went to the bedroom to go to bed myself when I found her silently sitting in her crib.  This has NEVER happened.  Ellie isn’t the “silently sit in her crib” kind of girl!  Since she was awake I got her up to nurse her.  She didn’t nurse but instead lay still in my arms breathing extremely fast.  I held her like this for about half an hour thinking she might go back to sleep.  She didn’t go to sleep so when Charles came in the room to go to bed I told him about her breathing and that I thought she might be in pain from teething.  We started giving her some Tylenol when she started to vomit.  I won’t give the details of this but let’s just say it was scary because she appeared to have trouble bringing it up.  Then I went back to holding her and she continued to breath rapidly.  When it was clear she wasn’t going to slow her breathing down anytime soon, Charles called the UTMB nurse hotline.  The nurse said due to her rapid breathing we should take her to the ER.  We debated if this was truly necessary but we were pretty concerned so we decided to take the nurse’s advice.   We hoped she was just uncomfortable from a virus and that’s what was causing her symptoms but as a mom you always worry that with something like this it’s more severe than just that.

Because of the scary vomiting incident, I didn’t want to drive Ellie to the hospital by myself.  She sits rear facing and I wouldn’t be able to see or get to her if there was an issue.  It was now about midnight and we had to get Payton out of bed to come with us.  Payton, being such a sweet big sister, was pretty concerned about Ellie.  Once we got checked in to the hospital Charles and Payton went back home.  Charles said when they got into the car he explained to her that they would come back to get Mommy and Ellie after Ellie saw the doctor.  And then Payton said, “Yeah but now we’re going to go get lunch!”  He said, “No, it’s still the middle of the night so right now we’re going home to go to sleep” to which Payton said, “Yeah, and then after that we’ll get lunch”.  I guess she was hungry! lol  

Once we got checked into the ER I explained Ellie’s symptoms and also mentioned the fact that since early Sunday morning her urine had had an odor to it that I intended to take her to her pediatrician for on Monday.  They took Ellie’s vitals and found that she had a low fever and a very high pulse rate.  The doctor said Ellie would need to be catheterized to get urine to check for infection.  A resident MD and nurse came in to do the catheterization.  The resident MD poked the catheter all up in poor little Ellie but couldn’t figure out how to do it.  Ellie was screaming and her entire body turned a dark red color.  It absolutely killed me and I wanted to yell at the resident to stop.  Finally the RN gave the resident some advice and she was able to get about 1 cc of urine which was enough for a test.   Next they took us down the hall for a chest x-ray which came back normal.  

 The results of the urine test were that she had an infection.  The doctor said that it looked very cloudy and had a good amount of bacteria and white blood cells.  He said he believed all of her symptoms (increased pulse, rapid breathing, vomiting….) were caused from the infection and indicated a fairly severe infection.   He also mentioned that her fever could be contributing to the symptoms and so they would give her some Tylenol.   The doctor told me they hadn’t gotten enough urine for a culture so they would have to catheterize her again.  I said, “I hate that because they had a lot of trouble with it” but he insisted it needed to be done.  

They wanted to make sure there would be enough urine so the resident brought in a cup of ice,a  straw, and can of Gatorade for me to get Ellie to drink.  Ellie has never had Gatorade before and she loved it.  She also loved sticking her hands into it and trying to grab ice to throw on the floor.   Awhile later they came back in and gave Ellie 2 shots of antibiotics, one in each thigh.  She obviously didn’t like that one bit!  They also gave her some Tylenol to bring down her fever and help with pain.

 Then the same resident MD came in to try again with the catheter.  She was clearly very irritated with the head ER doctor for making her do the catheter again.  She said things to the nurse like, “I can’t believe he is making me do this again!”  “He should have to sit in here and listen to her scream just for making me do this!”  “He’d better be happy about this”  “If this doesn’t make him happy, nothing will!”  It was like an episode of the TV show ER…… complete with the handsome gay ER doctor, the cocky female resident who has a lot to learn,  an attractive young nurse…. It’s just too bad that Ellie had to be a part of the drama.  Thankfully the second time around the resident did a much better job and was done in a matter of minutes.

After that the doctor came back in and said he wanted to wait awhile to continue to monitor Ellie to see if her heart rate and rapid breathing would go back down.  By this time it was about 4 a.m. and we were both exhausted.  I had been holding Ellie since we got there but she was tired enough that she let me lay her down on the stretcher.  She lay there half in and out of sleep.  I sat in a chair next to her and kept laying my head down on the stretcher.  

 Around 5 a.m. the doctor felt that her heart rate was back in the normal range for someone her age (it had dropped from being about 170-180 bpm to about 130-140 bpm) and he was comfortable letting us go home.  Her breathing was much more normal as well.  We were very thankful to be going home!

 At home we all went back to sleep but around 8:30 a.m. the girls were both awake for the morning.  Thankfully Ellie and I napped off and on all morning while Charles took care of Payton.  Ellie ended up taking an afternoon nap too.  When she was awake she was very tired and upset.  But besides acting uncomfortable, she hasn’t had any of the breathing symptoms and so likely she isn’t experiencing the rapid pulse symptoms either.  It was a nerve racking night but thankfully she seems to be on the mend.  She will continue antibiotics for 14 days and then follow up with her pediatrician.  Hopefully that will do the trick.  

So that’s the story of our first ER trip with either of our girls.  Hope we don’t have to do it again, ever!  Thank you all for the care and concern!