Hi all,

Well it finally happened, yesterday Olivia had the stomach flu and we made our first trip to the ER.  All-in-all, things went well, it was just an exhausting kind of day.  The big thing is you don't know if things are going to be OK or not. Just so you know up-front, Olivia is not a salt waster.

Olivia (age 3) woke up a little before 2 am telling me that she couldn't breath, and then she immediately vomitted over the bed.  After getting her cleaned up, the bed changed, more cortef, crackers and juice, we went back to bed.  She was feeling a little out of sorts, but nothing I was concerned about.  About an 1 1/2 hours later, she vomited again -- this time she made it to the carpet between the bedroom and bathroom.  (repeat the above cleanup!)  When we got up a little after 6 I gave her a triple dose of cortef and some children's advil because she had a 101-102 temp.  She also drank some more juice.  This stayed in her for about 45 minutes -- but based on appearance the Advil and cortef had gotten into her system.  Good news is, there still weren't any signs of crisis.  Fever went down, she was starting to feel better with some minor bouts of feeling like she needed to thow up.  About 9:30 her temp went up to 103 and she felt aweful.  After some juice stayed down for about 30 minutes, I gave her two chilren's Tylenol which stay in her for a maximum of 10 minutes.  Though there were no indications of crisis or that I needed to give her the dex shot, I called the "ped endo on call" (our weekend instructions).  He wanted me to bring her in (which is what I wanted too!) 

After calling my dad and step-mom to meet us at the hosptial to get Ruthie (15-months) we headed out.  The triage (sp?) nurse hadn't yet heard that we were comming,  but she knew about CAH and took us right in.  Within very short order, they had her vitals, drew some blood and had her hooked up to an IV.  First she got her dex, then salt water, then sugar water.  In between she was throughly checked by two doctors to make sure there wasn't something else going on. 

About 3 pm we were discharged.  After getting something to eat (mom was starved), getting Ruthie, and picking up meds we finally made it home a little before 7.  About 8:30, Olivia ate 1/2 a toaster waffle and drank a little juice.  When she fell asleep she slept like a rock -- which was amazing considering all of the steroids she had in her body.  This morning she has eaten 1/2 toaster waffle and is feeling OK.  She has a little temp, but no stomach problems.  Hopefully she is on the mend.

As I'm sure we all do, I've been going over everything I did.  I "think" I made all of the right choices -- but that could be because everything worked out.  I also have a pretty good feeling about how Olivia responds to fever and sickness in general.  But I will talk it over with our ped endo at the next appointment to see if I should have responded differently. 

Now I need to get busy and try to get all the Saturday and Sunday chores done in one day (won't happen!).