72 Hours and going strong

We had quite the scare with Joe this week. He got into mom's medicine and took one each of her cholesterol and diabetes medication. Thank God they taste so nasty because he came right out and told me "Yuck" and stuck out his tongue at me. When I looked at him I could see the remnants of a bill still on his tongue but when I went to reach for it he shut his mouth and swallowed. I knew he had been hanging out with mom in her room so I went in and asked where her pills were. She told me up on the dresser where she always keeps them, except this time they were sitting right in the middle of her bed. Mom and I quickly went through each day's compartments and determined exactly what was missing and I got on the line with Poison Control.

They weren't too overly concerned with the cholesterol med but freaked me out about the diabetes med. I told them it would take me 30 minutes to get to the nearest ER and they're like, "Go, go, GO... but drive safely". They notified the hospital I was en route and I threw on some clothes, scooped Joe up and off we went.

I called Larry on the way and of course he beat us to the hospital. I also called Crystal so she could check in with mom as we're not supposed to leave her by herself either until we're sure we've got her blood sugars regulated properly.

They whisked us right in when we got there, started giving him apple juice w/sugar added in, turkey sandwiches, milk, pudding... so much food that I'm surprised he didn't throw up. After an hour his blood sugar was still only 39 so they put him on a D5 (Dextrose) drip which helped him go up a few points, but not enough. They gave him another medicine through his IV which was supposed to help him suppress his own production of insulin. After three hours they decided he was going to have to stay a minimum of 24 hours and put in the call to have us transferred to Roseville Ped's which is a critical care facility. Larry and I managed to stay pretty calm through all of this as we didn't want to alarm Joey and tried to make a game out of "making red paint" every time they punctured him to test his sugar levels, and how much fun it was going to be to get to ride in a real ambulance.

It took almost the entire 24 hours before he finally started to get some numbers that were in the normal range of 70 - 90. After 30 hours we were holding steady at 109 so we finally were able to get discharged and head home.

Joey was none the worse for wear, but I was totally exhausted. In fact I was so tired I couldn't even eat the beautiful dinner Larry had cooked up for us and instead opted for pain med's with a sleeping pill to boot and went to sleep for a good solid six hours. Pure bliss.

So now both mom and Joe are doing good with their blood sugar levels and they've told us we shouldn't have any long term affects from this run in, but it probably would be a good idea if we didn't let Joey play in Grandma's room unless we have a locked cabinet for the med's. And we thought we were doing so well baby-proofing. I guess we still have a lot of room for improvement.