Sunday, March 21, 2010

continued...

this past few weeks has been a bit of a whirlwind. take the normal business of the weeks and throw in the beginning of the final trimester (yay!) of my fourth pregnancy and you can just about bet that i have been beyond exhausted. last saturday i had plans. i had to go to mooresville and go to a bridal shower for my soon to be sister in law. then i was going to finish making plans for the shower that my mom and i were throwing for her the following day. i was already feeling rushed and i was frantically wrapping the present for the shower in the living room as kyle made lunch for the kids. i needed to leave in 10 minutes and i was trying to put those final touches on the package...at the critical bow tying moment kyle calls from the kitchen, "i think you should come in here because i think jack's lips might be swollen."
i responded by saying, "i'm busy...bring him in here." (mother of the year part 1)
kyle responded by saying, "no, i think you should really come in here..."
i got up and walked into the kitchen and saw the image from the pictures i posted yesterday.
obviously kyle's response was a little understated; jack was OBVIOUSLY swollen.
neither one of us is a stranger to allergic reactions because calvary has had his fair share, so thankfully we were not panicked. we looked in the cabinet and gave him a dose of benadryl and then took pictures (mother of the year part 2)
i decided i would call my friend, who is a nurse, and ask her if she thought i needed to do anymore. at this point his lips were swollen along with his tongue and part of his cheek. i casually chatted with her for a couple of minutes (mother of the year part 3) and then asked her what i should do. she told me to keep checking his breathing and head on to urgent care if i notice any difficulties. 2 minutes later he started coughing and breathing funny.
i scratched all plans for shower appearances and we quickly loaded all the kids up and headed straight away to the urgent care.
the first place we went to asked us to sign in and have a seat. (she was incredibly curt and overall just rude) we sat down with our obviously swollen jack and she ignored us. for 15 minutes. we decided we were going across the street and the minute we walked in the lady took one look at us and ushered us back into a room. the next thing we all knew there were firemen and medics in the room asking us for a car seat and which one of us would be riding in the ambulance...nice.
i, being mother of the year (part 4), asked the medic if it was necessary to take the ambulance to the hospital. he assured me that it was. they did not like the idea of me riding because it is a bumpy ride so kyle was voted to ride along...
by the time we made it to the hospital we had swollen lips on jack and kyle car sick.
the hospital staff was very nice and gave all the kids popsicles...affirming calvary's love for the hospital...the doctor was really weird, but we left with prescriptions and spent the rest of the day recovering from the festivities of the day.
i am now armed and ready with epi-pens and the new found knowledge of oliver jack's allergy development.
the only thing that bothers me is the fact that we have been feeding him peanut butter for the past 6 months (i know, i know--kids are not supposed to be given peanut butter until year 2---mother of the year part 5) and we have never had even a hint of an allergic reaction.
i'm not writing off peanut butter forever, but without question peanut butter is off limits for at least a little while for now...

1 comment:

Tricia said...

I can relate to your asking if you really needed to take the ambulance to the hospital. I took Andrew to the pediatrician because he seemed to not be breathing very well and was a little grey. The doctor told us we needed to go to the emergency room and I asked if we could stop at home to get a few things first. Good Lord, what was I thinking?!? Anyway, glad to hear he's fine now and all of you survived the excitement.