ER and back

Chloe was first sick last Wednesday. She barfed in the car on the way to swimming. I thought that she had just put her fingers in her mouth and choked herself as she had been doing because of her teeth. But then she threw up again about an hour later. This was the beginning of her first bout with a nasty virus.

She threw up again Thursday, Friday morning and Saturday morning, but by Saturday afternoon she was back to her usual self. We thought she was over it. Then I went to pick her up on Sunday morning from my moms house. On the way home she threw up again and I've never seen so much mass come out of her. I don't know what it was or where it came from because she hadn't really eaten anything in 5 days. She slept for 2 hours straight when she got home and then when she woke up she wouldn't let us go. For those who know Chlo well, she is never still. Hugs are fleeting. She hates to be held most times. On Sunday, she wouldn't let go. She dozed on us throughout the morning. She was lethargic. This had me worried.

I had been conversing with the advice nurses at Kaiser (a great service, BTW) for several days. On Sunday, they made an appointment for us to see an on duty pediatrician. He recommended that we go to the ER to get her some fluids. At that point, she had been screaming for about an hour and didn't stop.

Let me just say that the staff at the ER at Santa Teresa were amazing. The nurses were fabulous. They got her IV in on the first try. A chest x-ray was negative. Her blood work came back negative for bacterial infection so things were looking up. Once the first bag of fluid was in, she started to perk up. Then they had to do a catheter to get a sterile urine sample, because toddler girls can often have UTI's the have no other symptoms besides vomiting and diarrhea. Oh yeah, forgot to mention the diarrhea. That was fun too.

So, in the end she was moderately dehydrated from gastroenteritis. 1.5 bags of saline later, she was ready to go home. Quite a scare for us, but she was a trooper. And of course we knew she was better because when we left she said, "what's this?" about the straw from juice they gave her. She hadn't talked much in 5 days. So we knew, our girl was back. Because these days, it's nothing but "what's this". But after being in that emergency setting, I'm so thankful our girl is healthy. I couldn't go through that again any time soon.