Nearly four year old Little Miss Adorable has been busy lately. Cruising the world in her walker, and a veteran of dance and riding lessons, she’s gaining confidence and strength day by day. So she’s trying more.
Which leads to some (big) missteps.
As a non-walker with very poor muscle tone, Little Miss Adorable is now pulling up to a stand and climbing up onto the sofa. And now she can climb down. She’s even figured out how to sit on the arm with the iPad on her lap. She’s trying more and taking risks. Some of which do not work out so well. There was the ‘stand up in her high chair’ incident, which lead to an enormous goose egg and sharp lesson in the importance of sitting on her bottom.
During our recent Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day, Little Miss Adorable demonstrated her superior fine motor skills by going through my purse. And she found a couple foil-wrapped tablets of chewable Gravol, and, unknown to us, she ate them.
We had no idea anything was amiss until she started vomiting in the middle of dance class. Surrounded by pink tulle and sparkles, she threw up everywhere. The class vacated the studio. Hubby did damage control while I scoured our van for a change of clothes for both of them.
Little Miss Adorable is not one of those ‘puker’ kids, the ones who throw up at the drop of a hat. In fact, people with Prader-Willi Syndrome usually do not vomit. Well, Little Miss Adorable proved them wrong.
When she turned gray we knew it was time to take her to the hospital. I wrangled Mr. Sensitive and The Dunk out of dance class and shepherded them into the van. A quick check of a map lead us to our closest hospital, one we’d never been to before. Our dance class is in a town about an hour from our home, so we raced to the new hospital.
Hubby drove the van into the half-empty parking lot, commenting on how the parking control bar was up. I wrapped Little Miss Adorable in a towel and followed signs down unfamiliar corridors to the Emergency Department.
We were quickly triaged and the nurse declared Little Miss Adorable ‘stoned.’ Little Miss Adorable slumped, wide eyed in the hospital seat; silent, staring into space, she smiled faintly at the nurse. Little Miss Adorable was soon resting in a bed hooked up to every monitor imaginable – beeping electronics were to keep us company for the night.
I had been texting Hubby updates while he sat in the van with the other two kids. We assumed she’d be released in a couple hours and there was no point in driving home and then heading back.
Then the nurse said Little Miss Adorable was stable, but had to stay for EIGHT HOURS of observation and cited risk of cardiac arrest. We’d be released when her time was up, possibly at 3 am. With a nurse watching Little Miss Adorable, I hiked across the hospital to deliver the news to Hubby. He would go home, unload the two kids then drive back at 3 AM.
Hubby was entertaining the kids with Youtube videos on his phone, and the van was still parking in the same parking lot. However, the gate was now closed. We drove up and tried the gates. No amount of button pushing or shoving on the gate would budge them. We deliberated taking the van up over the curb. Calculating the costs of damaged suspension vs. general inconvenience, I turned to go back into the hospital to find someone to let them out.
The doors I had just left mysteriously locked behind me.
Knocking and rattling the door proved futile, so I set off, marching around the hospital to find an entrance that would actually open, admiring the gardens in the twilight, and found myself back in the Emergency Department. I explained my parking problem to the nurse, and she directed me to the security office. I marched back through the hospital, right to the door that had just locked me out. A security officer was now sitting beside the door. I guess he locked me out. I explained that Hubby and the kids were now locked inside the parking lot.
The officer kindly handed over a parking ticket, and Hubby met me at the door to grab the parking ticket that would magically open the gates. (See, we do learn – I didn’t want to hike around the hospital again!)
Hubby and the kids drove home to sleep and wait for a call to pick us back up. A nightmarish blur of beeping electronics, loud staff, and the sounds (and smells!) of sick people permeated the rest of the night. I slept fitfully, propped in a hospital chair and finally crawling into bed beside Little Miss Adorable, hospital rails keeping us tucked in.
At 3 AM, as promised, we were woken up, given a lecture on the importance of childproofing, and released. Bleary eyed, I called Hubby to pick us up. Little Miss Adorable occupied herself by sorting brochures in the waiting room while I slumped in a chair.
By 4 AM we were home, and setting alarm clocks. Why? We had to wake up in a couple hours to drive to another town for an important appointment.
What does your family do with days like this?
