Running With Scissors: Emily's Incident

I'm going to sum the story up as best I can. I don't have all of the pictures I want but hopefully this weekend I will get them up. So here it goes:

We went up to Pine Mountain 2 weekends ago because Aaron wanted to go motorcycle riding with his Uncle and they have a great track up there somewhere. So, Saturday Aaron left and went riding while I stayed back at the house with the little ones and moms. The day was great. Emily was being good and terrorizing Eian her little (but bigger) cousin.

As a side note, they are going to tear each other apart and fight like siblings. Eian is one year and only a few days younger than Emily, therefore Eian is just pushing his terrible 1 1/2's (because that's when we all know it begins) and Emily is in her terrible two's. PERFECT combination. I watched Emily as she dropped her baby, Eian ran up and picked it up, Emily saw this, ran over screaming, tried to jerk the toy out of his hands, had a mini wrestling match, Eian tried to bite Emily's arm while they were both on the ground, then Emily pushed him away with her feet to his belly. Me, being the good mom that I am, let them duke it out. Harsh? nah. Eian might be younger but he can definatly hold his own. He already weighs more than Emily, can scream and cry just as loud, and what Emily has in cordination, he has in defence skills (like biting).

Back to the story...

Emily comes over and asks me if she can go see her Granny who is in the bathroom getting ready. I say yes and walk her back to the bedroom, open the bedroom door and hear the blowdryer, Emily gets excited because I always blow dry her hair with mine. She runs to the bathroom door and knocks. Again, she squeals and says "I want to see the MaMa (Granny)?" I say "Yeah, you can" and walk back into the livingroom. Not 2 minutes later, Margie comes running out and says that Emily got into Denny's muscle relaxant. She had never heard Emily (because she was blow drying her hair and the door was locked), but when she opened the door to walk out Emily was standing there with something in her hand. She had said it was goggy and popped on in her mouth. When Margie asked where she got it from she took her over to the opened, child safety lidded, bottle. We still don't know how she got into them, but what we knew at the time is that she had gotten one for sure. Later when we asked her she actually said 2, which was pretty much confirmed by the way she was acting in the ER.

After a long, unhelpful chat with the poison control man, I was pretty much told that one pill was okay, 2 would make her sleep forever and she could possibly stop breathing, and 3 would cause brain damage and seizers. WONDERFUL I thought, as I went into full mother melt down, we were, at best, 1 1/2 hours from the nearest ER. Poison control actually told me originally to wait and see how she acts because if it was just one she would be just fine. Looking back on it, I should have had the guy sued, that could have been life or death for my daughter. Later when I called back to ask if she could eat anything or drink anything, I got a hold of the SAME GUY, who said that I should be at a hospital and not worrying if she should be eating or drinking anything. Thanks ALOT jerk.

Needless to say we booked it down to the nearest ER. Emily was nodding off the whole way there. We had met Aaron on the way though Frazier Park and picked him up and then flew down the hill to Valencia. We got there and were admitted. Emily was forced to drink charcoal. I'm a bad mom and was out making phone calls when they came in with it. I guess she didn't like it at first, but Aaron told her that i would make her tummy better and she chugged it. The nurse said that she was AMAZING for doing that...most adults don't take it that easy.

The rest of the stay was horrible. She pretty much passed out after the charcoal. They hooked her up to monitors to make sure that her vitals were all okay and then we waited...and waited.....and waited. More than 6 hours went by and the Dr. came in to tell us that they wanted to admit her overnight since she wasn't being responsive to us trying to wake her up. Unfortunately for us...the nearest pediatrics facility was 45 minutes away. In order to admit her to transport her, they had to give her an IV, but if they gave her an IV then they had transport her by ambulance. Sounds like a catch 22 to me! Not to mention I had to wake her up for the IV, which was going to make her mad, then the IV it's self was going to tick her off. Just as I predicted, she screamed bloody murder. Then they gave her the IV, where she continued to scream bloody murder. It was traumatizing but I knew it was all for her to get better. After the nurses left, she layed down and went back to sleep.

The nurses came back in to tell me that the blood they had drawn was fine but he sugar was low so I had to wake her up again to give her some crackers and juice. This was when everything turned around. She woke up, ate 4 packets of crackers and drank a bunch of juice, and stayed awake. This was a great sign. That's when the medics showed up to transport her. It was actually pretty cute. The two very nice guys strapped her into her car seat and then strapped that to the stretcher and wheeled her through the ER as she smiled and waved to everyone. Even though it was cute, it felt like the walk of shame for me. They loaded her up and we were on our way. 45 minutes later and a great chat with the ambulance driver (also my first time in an ambulance) we were at the pediatric facility in downtown LA. Emily was wheeled in and admitted. We unbuckled her and kept a close eye on her as she charmed all of the nurses and ran around the ER. When the doctor came in he took one look at her and said that she was perfectly fine and would get us right out of there.

The very nice doctor said that the people at the other hospital had sent us there to cover their butts, because they wanted a pediatric doctor to sign off on her papers. Apparently Flexaril has a 4-6 hour peak time, where if she took 1 or 100 pills, the side effects would have been apparent during that time. Since it was almost 12 hours later and she was being her normal, slightly groggy, self. I had nothing to worry about. An hour later we were on our way back to Pine Mountain Club. Emily fell asleep on the way there and slept through the night.

I woke up to the next morning to her bouncing on the air mattress, giggling and wanting "num nums". She immediately went back to terrorizing Eian and running around like a wild woman. My Emily was back!

One thing they didn't warn us about, however, was what the charcoal would be like when it came out...to spare you ALL the gory details, just imagine this: You know that black stinky muck on the bottom of a swamp? That's pretty much what came out...for 3 days.

Don't worry everyone...I learned my lesson and earned a few grey hairs in the process! Every mother, who experiences some sort of tragedy's famous last words are always "it was only a few seconds" and it truly was. That and as well behaved your child has been in the past, it is important to take the proper precautions to make sure there are no temptations for them. Child proofing is SOOOO important, that 'one time'...could be fatal. My situation could have been much much MUCH worse and I thank God, every time that Emily starts to drive me a little crazy, that she is still here to be able to.

Here's some pictures of her the day after: