Lily's Hospital Visit

Friday night we were looking forward to a very fun weekend. I was playing on the floor with Lily. She likes to run to my arms and when I catch her I fall backwards like she has knocked me over, and she falls on top of me. When she ran to me the first time I noticed that she had some wet yellow residue on her chin - I wiped it off, wondering a little where it had come from, and we continued to play until she was tired and I put her to bed. Then I went to the bathroom to take my contacts out and noticed that there was yellow all over my face and dress and hands. It suddenly hit me that I should be a ot more concerned about what this was coming from. I searched the living room but couldn't find anything that would leave yellow markings. Then I searched the pills in the cabinet and found a yellow one thats coating left the same exact color behind when I got it wet. I wasn't too alarmed, but I did the correct thing and called poison control to find out what kind of reaction, if any, I could expect, was this pill to be the cause of the yellow residue. This is where the night changed dramatcially for us.

I'm pretty sure the man who answered the phone did not have children, because I feel like he was almost trying to incite panic instead of keeping me calm. His two most poignant remarks were "there is an effective antedote if given within the first hour" and "this is absoluetly the worst medicine she could have gotten ahold of". Well, at this point it had been about 45 minutes, and I knew I had to pack her bag, get her out of bed, and drive to the hospital, and I also knew that I never wanted to hear the word "antedote" used in reference to my child. I asked him that I had not actually seen her with the pill, just that the coloring matched, and he said that the pill would cause a delayed response and I would see nothing soon, and that I should hang up immediately and drive to the emergency room.

And so I threw on some flipflops, grabbed a cup of milk, and the 3 of us hopped in the car and drove to the hospital. I was really amazed at how quickly the responded. We were in the back with nurses the minute I had the 1st form filled out. And other than the very first nurse we saw, all of the nurses and doctors were incredibly good with her. They kept her smiling and were so friendly and helpful. they kept her distracted why they got her hooked up to all the machines and did her EKG. The two men who did her IV were amazing with her, and they kept her so entertained that she didn't even cry or move until they were completely finished.

At the ER.

After being at the ER for about an hour, the doctor told us that they would be sending us over to the Children's Hopsital so we could be admitted for the night. I think this was very hard for Clay, following behind the ambulance in the car. But, the light was on inside, so he could see both of us and how calm she was all the way over.

She snuggled with Daddy for awhile after we got to the children's hospital, then finally went to sleep around 2 am. When she woke up at 7 am she was in a very good mood and wanted to play in her baby hospital bed.

This was her trying to pull everything off of the wall.

She thought this "cage" was the greatest thing to play in - thank goodness. It would have been very hard to have to try to keep her in one place hooked to machines, had she not loved to be in there. She liked to look through the clear part at people, look through the bars, run around inside, and have things dropped ove rthe top to her.

She took the monitor off her toe - it has a bright red light and she was always intrigued by it.

Finally taking a nap on Saturday - much needed after only 5 hours of sleep during the night.

The next morning when nothing had happened, we knew she was going to be okay, but I am still having a hard time recovering from the experience.

It's hard to have 5 people lecture you on the location of medicine in your home, and then send a social worker to speak with you. Luckily, she was very kind and explained that she just had to be there because of policy, and had much less to say than anyone else. But, is there really a better place than the highest cabinet in the kitchen - at Lily's age? It would be impossible for her to reach the medicines. A lock box seems like overkill right now, and something could be accidentally dropped just as easily when taking medicine from one of those.

Having my role as a mother questioned has left me reeling a little.

I am, however, very thankful that my little girl remains healthy. Nana searched the house while we were gone and couldn't find any yellow substance anywhere. What actually happened reamins a mystery.