A Week from HELL

This past Monday, I was awaken around 7am by Abby climbing into my bed for a cuddle as usual. Sammy then appeared at the door but did not join us for some giggles before I normally kick them out to go downstairs for breakfast. Sammy kept whining that she wanted to change her clothes. I kept telling her that she can go do it herself or she can wait for five more minutes until I get out of bed (I'm a little lazy in the morning). Well, apparently I wasn't giving her the attention she wanted so she vomited right then and there on my bedroom carpet. Well, that got my attention! I leaped out of bed to help her. She didn't have much in her stomache at that time of the morning so it wasn't much of a mess. However, she proceeded to vomit about fourty-five minutes later and then every twenty minutes to half hour after that for almost the next thirty-six hours! She also had a bad case of diarrhea. We had hardly a wink of sleep on Monday night as she slept on the floor next to our bed and vomited threw the night. The next morning I started to worry thinking that this thing had now taken its course for twenty-four hours and should have then gone away. However, she was just as bad the next morning. I called the doctor and they told me to give it some more time.

By 6pm that night, I started to really worry and did not know how I would make it through the night without getting some peace of mind that she was ok since she had not gotten any better. I took her to an urgent care clinic down the road after eating dinner. The doctor there took one look at her and panicked. She was severely dehydrated. He ordered me to take her to the emergency room immediately! Her eyes had sunken into her head with dark circles around them. Her normally plump, chubby little cheeks were sunken in and all her coloring was gone. She did not look at all like my Sammy. I freaked out and while driving her to the hospital was crying. She asked me why I was so sad. Hmmm... not quite sure how to answer that one. I couldn't believe she had gotten so bad. I was quite relieved in a way though that they were sending me to the emergency room too because I knew she would get help and get better.

When we arrived, they immediately hooked her up to an IV and gave her some Zofran (medicine to stop the nausea so she would no longer vomit). She kept asking if the doctor had drinks. She was so thirsty but was previously holding nothing down (not even the smallest ice chips). She lay there as limp as she had been all day. It killed me to look at her. I stayed with her in the emergency room until 1:30am when they finally got us a room. I was sleeping on a tiny bench there that was only long enough for me to lie on my side in the fetal position so I was very grateful to finally move to a room with a little pull-out bed. Sammy slept all night that night. I slept sporadically. She woke up the next morning and was still quite lethargic but looking much more like herself which was a great relief.

We stayed all day in the hospital trying to get Sammy to take in some liquid. They wanted her to be taking a certain amount of liquid on her own and she wasn't. I tried everything to get her to drink. Drink cups, cans, glasses and straws filled her little table. She would cry every now and then wanting to go home and wanting the IV out of her arm. Things turned around a bit when Daddy showed up with little pal, Abby. Abby brought Sammy her "hee hee" (which is what Sammy calls her favorite blanket because everytime I would give it to her when she was little she would laugh - hee hee - because she was so happy to have it). Daddy and Abby also brought Sammy's favorite show "Mary Poppins" as well as her Lilly doll and some books. Daddy and Abby stayed and played for the afternoon and evening. We took walks with little Sammy and her IV pole down the hall and on trips to steal crackers from the nurses' station. It was so cute to watch this little body in her tiny hospital gown and long, blonde, vomit-encrusted hair walking around with her IV pole (or spider as she called it since it had many legs). However, it looked like they were going to keep us another night. So much to Abby's dismay, Charles and she went home. I would have made Charles stay the second night but there was no way he was going to fit on the tiny fold-out bed they had (length-wise or width-wise). Reluctantly, I agreed to stay but then again, I don't know how I could have been able to bare leaving my little Sammy anyway.

After they left, I put on Mary Poppins which immediately brought Sammy to life. She started jumping up on every song (like she does at home) and be-bopping around to the music. Dancing with her IV pole, is how the doctor saw her when she arrived to check on her one last time for the night. She was FINALLY drinking more (after I told the nurse I was ready to dump all the juice in her IV bag) and feeling better. The doctor agreed to let us go home at 10pm.

We brought her home and she slept through the night without a peep. Thursday, she was extremely exhausted and slept most of the day. She vomited three times. She seems to be on the mend but it is still a bit worrying. Hopefully she will kick this terrible virus in the next day or two and be back to herself dancing to "a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down..." maybe Mary Poppins' remedy is all she needed all along...