Long Night

Thursday night, we spent the evening as a family, playing and eating and celebrating T's birthday. All was well as we tubbed the boys and got them all tucked in to bed for the night. Tommy was playing around with his phone and I was messing with the computer.


Just after midnight, K was having a hard time sleeping. He would fuss and T would pat his booty until he went back to sleep. Repeat three or four times. After the second, T turned to me and said "its gonna be a long night. Turns out he was right because after a few seconds of him being in K's room, I heard an awful hacking, gagging noise. I am not sure I have ever gotten up that fast. It was the unmistakable sound of a child throwing up.


I ran into his room and T was holding him out at arms length, looking at the floor. Yeah, I grabbed K and told T to go clean himself up. After a few seconds, K started to throw up again. This time it seemed like he was never going to stop. It just kept coming and coming. Finally he did stop but what happened next scared the life out of me. I had him turned with his back to me to avoid the nasty and when he stopped that time, he leaned back against my chest and went completely limp. He was breathing but I couldn't rouse him. About that time, T came back and I just looked at him and told him something is wrong. I went and laid him down on his changing table and flipped the light on. Still limp and a blank stare. The scariest part was that he was ghost white, his lips and fingers were blue and he just stared at the ceiling. Ensue freak out.


It really only lasted about a minute or two and he started to wiggle and look around again but it felt like forever. Before his color came back, he started throwing up again. This time, he didn't stop responding but he went limp again and his hands turned purple. So I called my mother to come get D and we rushed around getting some non- puked all over clothes on him and us, which was a total fiasco in its own considering he was still throwing up about every five minutes.


Pretty quick, we were out the door and on our way to the ER. He had pinked up again by the time we left and it had been about ten minutes since he had thrown up last but the last 45 minutes of violent vomiting had definitely taken its toll on him . He was still a noodle. We got to the hospital pretty quick because it was late and we had the road to ourselves. When we got there, T dropped us off at the doors and went to park the car. When we got inside and into the pediatric ER, he started throwing up again. This time he didn't turn any weird colors though so we were told to check in and sit down. The waiting room was almost full.

Napping on Daddy

So, we sat there and waited for our turn. Luckily he had run out of things in his tummy so it wasn't as messy as it could have been. He was still heaving about every ten minutes for another few hours and was still limp and scary looking but he never went blue or unresponsive again. So, we sat and waited. For four hours. Considering K was the only one there that even looked or acted remotely sick at all, that was insane. K cat napped on his daddy for a little bit but with all of those people in there, it was hard for him to stay asleep for long. We took turns snuggling him and messing with our phones and complaining


Then they took us to the smaller waiting room, also known as a patient room, where we waited another hour and a half for the doctor. When he finally came in, we talked for a long time. He was very thorough which was nice for an ER doc but it also explained the wait. We talked about what he had eaten (nothing new), about what we had done all day (nothing weird),  how he had been acting all day (fine) and all that type of stuff. He did a bunch of poking and prodding around on his tummy and his bum and throat.

No fun, no fair.

He finally told us that what he believes happened was that his intestines has twisted on themselves at some point (since he hadn't pooped) and causing the massive amount of undigested food to have to go somewhere. Up and out it came. He said that it seemed to him that his bowels had untwisted, probably from the force of his retching and he would be okay but he did a million tests to make sure there was no bleeding or issues like that. He also said that his blood pressure would have dropped dramatically when they untwisted, causing the color change, lethargy and unresponsiveness. It also explains why it was only really scary bad that one time.


I had to nurse him and he had to keep that down and have a wet diaper before we could leave to make sure he wasn't dehydrated. We were finally discharged eight hours after we had first come in to go home with a strict diet to follow and instructions that if he didn't poop by today (he has) or starts doing it again, to bring him back. Poor little K was asleep before Tommy got him buckled into his car seat. We were all exhausted but it was so hard to see him that tired.


So, yesterday, we all just rested and relaxed around the house. My mom ended up taking D to the preschool where she works with her so we could get some rest. He came home after lunch and we all took another nap. K woke up in the evening all fired up and back to normal. Besides another little nap, he was back to being his self. It was so good to see him back to normal after the way he had looked the night before. I hope none of you  ever has to see your child that way. Scary stuff.

8 a.m. - Going home

Today we are running all over to parties and craziness. We are supposed to try to slowly get him back to eating his regular diet today and see how it turns out. I am hoping its all over and it won't happen ever again but at least we would know what was going on.