Friday, December 02, 2005

Voluminous Vomit

When traveling in Birmingham last week during Thanksgiving, I discovered that my child, though only roughly over 15 lbs., can produce an excessive amout of fluid projecting from her body. This adventurous little encounter can be related to the fact that she is more than likely allergic to soy. She was fine the rest of the trip and never ran a fever. However, her body DEEPLY rejected the soy along with everything else.

Unfortunately, we encountered this act yesterday afternoon and well into the evening as she yet again released every item that had been engulfed for the day. We monitored her for several hours thinking that she may have had bad milk or formula or food, but we reached a lathargic state with sporadic dry heaving and knew it might be more. After a couple of hours of trying to get her to keep down an OUNCE of Pedialyte, the doctor suggested we take her to the ER because of fear of dehydration.

So 7:00, off we go to the hospital. I hope you are already visualizing this next episode of "What the Crap?" Jeremy drops us off at the ER at Cooks Children's Hospital and I stop in my tracks when I walk in because the waiting room is already bursting. I knew it would be a long night. We register Emma and the perform the preliminary assessment within about 10 minutes. Gave me false hope! Darn them. Needless to say, we waited a little over 3 hours before going back to see a doctor. I knew we were still waiting when the child who was already in the waiting room with a bleeding bandage around his HEAD was still walking around WAITING! Hmmm.

We managed though. Emma only vomited 4-5 times while we were in the hospital and by then it was not voluminous anymore. She slept the rest of the time from exhaustion. Now, I must tell you that I am a BIG "People Watcher", so I spent quite a bit of time taking in the crowd and assessing their situations. From time to time, Jeremy joins in with me on this activity. After a couple of hours of this, we have decided that we must share with you all that the best evening entertainment is sitting in the waiting room and watching children run amuck.

Let me set the scene. It is crowded and parents are tired and they have more than one child with them and you reach a point that as long as they are not poking another child in the eye, whatever. In Cooks' waiting room, there is this giant faux aquarium. Along the bottom of the wall that the aquarium is housed is a panel of buttons. Each button activates a different stimulant in the aquarium. For instance, there is an eel that will come out from behind the reef if you press the eel button.

Because I do not want to steal his thunder, I must now direct you to Jeremy's site for the rest of the story. It will be the story describing "Justin" and "Little Jonathan Winters".

Emma is still running a fever so prayer for her would be appreciated. Mommy and Daddy are both still well, but very tired. She apparently had a very bad stomach bug and her precious spirit was so pitiful. She has slept a ton in the past 24 hours. Sleep is healing, but her little body needs nutrition as well.

1 comment:

Amy said...

Hey girl, I hope Miss Emma is feeling better by now. I hate late night trips to the ER. Ben and I took Katie once when she was lathargic and dehydrated and she actullay got better before they saw us. Any way, I ran into Josh Bartlett at Walley World the other day and he specifically asked me to tell you that he said "hello" so, Josh says "hello." Have a very Merry CHRISTmas !!!!