Her blood glucose was 570 at the pediatrician’s office so we were sent to the ER. I pretty much knew at that point that we would be spending a couple of days there. We checked in right around noon and they checked her BG again – it was at 535. They also had her pee in another cup. We waited in the waiting room for what seemed like forever, but in reality it was maybe 30 minutes. The real waiting started once they got her back into a bed. They came and got her for a chest X-ray since I had told them about the pediatrician hearing something in her lungs, and since we were there anyway it was good to get checked out. She was excited to be able to see the picture of the inside of her chest.
There wasn’t anything immediate that needed tending to aside from getting an IV in. That was kind of a nightmare because they couldn’t get the needle into the vein in her elbow, so they were poking around in there for a few minutes before giving up and going for her hand. Throughout all of it she was amazingly calm and all the nurses remarked about how well she was doing and how they had some adult patients who could take a lesson from her. Finally the nurse had a second nurse come over to assist with getting the IV in after the second site wasn’t cooperating and her vein kept moving around. They finally got it in and everything hooked up and started her on a normal saline drip to get her hydrated and flush out some of the sugar and ketones that were floating around in there.
From there we mostly just waited. The ER doctor did eventually come in and confirm that it was, in fact, diabetes and that she also had pneumonia (so glad we got those x-rays). They started her on an insulin infusion shortly after. A little while later (pardon my timeline, the entire hospital experience is just a time blur) we were greeted with a teddy bear named Rufus who came accompanied with a blue JDRF backpack full of goodies for kids with diabetes. Really, Rufus was the goody and the rest of the stuff was educational materials and a brand new Accu-Chek glucose meter and our favorite invention – the fastclix lancing device. Well, a favorite as far as lancing devices go. The backpack was brought to us by the Diabetes Nurse Educator who wanted to introduce herself and make sure Angelina was okay and to let us know that she would be spending a few hours with us the next day to get us educated on managing Angelina’s diabetes care.
After that we just did some more waiting. We were told around 4pm (maybe?) that they would be moving her to the Pediatric ICU eventually. My husband was at work through all of this and we had been texting back and forth. He was finally able to get out of work “early” at 5pm (after working since 6am) and headed up to meet us. Angelina was so excited to see her dad, I think mostly just because she had been stuck in a little curtained room with me for the past 5 1/2 hours. Shortly after her arrived they FINALLY came to move us up to her room in the PICU.
To be continued…
Chasing Lows 