What
is it with my family and holiday trips to the emergency room?
Sometime around 3am Christmas morning my husband woke me up because of sudden, absolutely excruciating pain in his back. Not only did he need to get to the hospital immediately, my poor guy was in no condition to drive himself.
So I woke up the kiddo, pulled a hoodie over his head, pushed shoes on his feet and herded him toward the door. We were about to leave to get desperately needed help for my husband, when I stopped to detour through the kitchen to grab a few things.
Unfortunately I am a veteran of the emergency room and the long hours spent in them waiting for treatment and for relief, for answers or for a referral to someone who can give them. So I packed up my son's medications, expecting that we would still be there when the time came for him to take them with breakfast. Since there would unlikely be anything he could safely eat, I also gathered a few safe snacks, a juice box and some bananas from the bowl on the counter.
Finally as I resumed course, I grabbed both the Nintendo DS and its charger, pulled the
EpiPens from their hook by the door and joined my family in the car.
The entire side trip only took five minutes, but they were five minutes during a real emergency and a time of incredible pain for my husband. Time was of such importance that I blew through several red lights on the way to the hospital, yet I still stopped to bring food and meds for my son.
As we waited at the hospital to receive tidings of a kidney stone, I was very glad that I had brought the supplies with us, especially since the DS was able to keep The Kid distracted from his dad's distress. During the long hours we spent there I had plenty of time to contemplate every decision I had made on the way and try to figure out how we could have been better prepared.
Since then I've started to put together a "go kit" for my son with one or two days worth of meds and some safe food in it to keep near the door along with his EpiPens. It's still a work in progress and will require monthly mainenance to exchange the medications for new ones so they don't expire, plus switching out the snacks so they don't get stale and nasty. I'm using the medication bottles from the previous month after I refill his prescriptions, to make sure they have the original labels on them.
I still don't have a satisfactory container or location for the emergency kit, and I haven't made final decisions on its contents. If you have something similar prepared, I'd love a comment describing it.
Hopefully your holidays have been both uneventful and joyous. Here's wishing all of you a safe and happy New Year!
What is it with my family and holiday trips to the emergency room?
Sometime around 3am Christmas morning my husband woke me up because of sudden, absolutely excruciating pain in his back. Not only did he need to get to the hospital immediately, my poor guy was in no condition to drive himself.
So I woke up the kiddo, pulled a hoodie over his head, pushed shoes on his feet and herded him toward the door. We were about to leave to get desperately needed help for my husband, when I stopped to detour through the kitchen to grab a few things.
Unfortunately I am a veteran of the emergency room and the long hours spent in them waiting for treatment and for relief, for answers or for a referral to someone who can give them. So I packed up my son's medications, expecting that we would still be there when the time came for him to take them with breakfast. Since there would unlikely be anything he could safely eat, I also gathered a few safe snacks, a juice box and some bananas from the bowl on the counter.
Finally as I resumed course, I grabbed both the Nintendo DS and its charger, pulled the EpiPens from their hook by the door and joined my family in the car.
The entire side trip only took five minutes, but they were five minutes during a real emergency and a time of incredible pain for my husband. Time was of such importance that I blew through several red lights on the way to the hospital, yet I still stopped to bring food and meds for my son.
As we waited at the hospital to receive tidings of a kidney stone, I was very glad that I had brought the supplies with us, especially since the DS was able to keep The Kid distracted from his dad's distress. During the long hours we spent there I had plenty of time to contemplate every decision I had made on the way and try to figure out how we could have been better prepared.