We made our first call to 911

I put Gracie to sleep around 10:00 pm on Monday night September 3. A few hours later at about 12:15 am Tuesday, I heard her making a strange sounding cry so I went to look in on her and even in the dark I could tell her lips, hands and feet were blue. I yelled to Davie to turn the oxygen up a notch. He thought she was getting her color back but I was still worried so I called the doctor, we have Kaiser so we have to talk to an advice nurse, I got through right away and she was very nice. She first told us to drive to the hospital then changed her mind saying that she thinks we live too far and for us to call 911. David still wasn't ready to call 911 so he called UCSF to see if one of the nurses we like was working and one was, he told her what was going on and she agreed we should call. (I was already on dialing)

Our next door neighbor Joni is a paramedic and was on duty that night, our neighborhood is not on her route but she called her fiancé and told him about the call and he came right over. He was able to keep everything calm and was able to talk to the firemen and paramedics when they arrived at our house. The firemen took her off of our o2 and put her on theirs and gave her “blow by” as well. She had her normal color back before arriving at the hospital. I was beginning to feel silly for calling 911. Gracie and I were taken to the nearest hospital (Sutter Delta). I had taken her temp at home and it read 101 but when they took it at the hospital they got 103. They tried to get a urine sample and start an IV but had no luck. They did take some blood to run a culture. After about 5 hours she was transferred to Kaiser (Walnut Creek) we were taken by ambulance again. We were stuck in that ER for several hours; they also tried to start an IV and get a urine sample but also had no luck. She was eventually admitted and by this time I was feeling a little stupid for calling 911. Gracie seemed fine, she was pink and her fever was gone. Gracie and I were both tired and a little grumpy. Gracie is only 8 months old (only 13 ½ pounds) They don’t have cribs in the ER and she would roll right off a gurney so I had to hold her the whole time we were waiting in the ER’s. Once she was admitted the nurse took her to a treatment room to start the IV and get the urine sample. Then some people from the lab came up and drew blood every hour for 3 hours to draw blood for cultures. The doctor was really nice and said that they were really concerned about Gracie’s fever. Her cardiologist wanted her treated for pneumonia. He was actually out of town but came in as saw her later when he got back into town; he did an echo and said that “heart wise” she was actually doing much better. Her pressures had dropped from 80% to 60%, still not great but finally going in the right direction. He feels really good about postponing her next cath for another 6 months! She was supposed to have one in November. He even said that he thinks she may end up not needing the Glenn procedure. She will still need something done with her tricuspid valve at some point. The cultures they ran take 72 hours so we were stuck in the hospital until they got the results. She was still getting antibiotics in her IV but on Thursday morning we noticed that her IV was infiltrated so they had to take it out and since it was so hard to start the iv in the first place the Doctor decided to leave it out and give her a 24 hour dose of the antibiotic by injection. It kind of stunk because it had to be given in the muscle and because it was such a large dose they had to split into two so she got one in each leg. Finally on Friday all the cultures had come back negative and her fever was gone, she did pick up a little cough while we were there but it didn’t seem too bad so we were discharged. YEAH!!!

We saw her pediatrician this morning and of course her cough got worse and she is now coughing up mucus. He called her Cardiologist and they decided to run some more blood cultures and gave her another major dose on antibiotics (injections in both legs) He thought about admitting her again but since she didn’t have a fever and her sats were 97% he would send her home but wants to see her again on Friday.

It looks like all of this excitement was all about a cold. I still don’t know if I really needed to call 911 but I would rather feel silly for calling when I don't really need to than for not calling when I should have.


Blessings,
Dave & Jackie