Scary ER Visit

Last night I experienced one of the scariest things ever as a mother. I had to rush Sean (again) to the Children’s Hospital, for an allergic reaction. Unlike his hives from head to toe when he ate 3 peaches and we discovered he was allergic (to 4 fruits: peaches, nectarines, cherries & apricots), Sean had an anaphylactic reaction after eating a handful of almonds. His entire body turned red in a rash, different from the hives from his previous reaction, (and different from his reaction when we visited MD Now in the USA). He started to cough, and he tried to hoark (is that even a word?) into the sink saying he had something stuck in his throat and it was tickling his throat. He then started to wheeze. That’s when I panicked. I didn’t think it was bad enough yet to administer him epipen, but what did I know. I learned a lot last night. I left the kids home with Jamie and I grabbed my mom and we ran to the Montreal Children’s Hospital (and got stuck in traffic). It freaked all the way to the hospital, but in a calm way, not to freak Sean out, who wanted to rip the skin off his body and my mom had to hold his hands so that he wouldn’t keep scratching. When we got to the ER he was admitted immediately and they had me administer the epipen. I was scared. I had never done it before, and I had to jab my son in the leg with this needle that I hear hurts. Me? Inflict pain on my son? I didn’t want to – but it was to save his life. So I grabbed his leg while a nurse held down his arms, and held the leg in a position to grab the muscle, and I jammed the epipen into my son’s thigh. SCARY! Frightening. He SCREAMED BLOODY MURDER. I counted to 10, as per epipen instructions, and I stopped shaking. I calmed down, they gave him antihistamines and steroids and an oxygen mask. When there was a bed free in observation we got moved, and we sat and watched movies for about 4 hours. They monitor him, checked his saturation levels, his blood pressure, and temperature. We discovered his elbow on one arm was extremely swollen (you can see the red elbow in the photo above). We ruled out infection (there were 2 mosquito or some other bug bites that were by his elbow that we thought might have gotten infected when he was trying to scratch his entire body from the reaction. I was given a script for antibiotics just in case and was told that if it’s still inflamed or gets worse by today, to fill the script. The did give him 1 dose of antibiotic in the ER last night, just in case. But he woke up and the swelling was gone and his arm was back to normal (besides the bug bites) this morning. I kept him home from school today because his leg by the epipen injection area was stiff from the actual injection, and we also got home close to midnight last night, so I gave him a pass to stay home today. When he woke up this morning, at his usual wake-up time for a weekend (when not in school) he looked like he had purple lines under his eyes, and he looked exhausted.

Now, we avoid nuts all together until his appointment with his allergist in August (I couldn’t get an appointment any sooner). At least I’ll have some answers before he starts grade 1.

In the last week and a half I’ve been to the Children’s Hospital with all 3 kids. Mack for his lip, Quentin for the developmental clinic (more on that in another post sometime soon) and with Sean for his anaphylactic reaction to almonds. I had even been to the hospital twice yesterday, once at 1 pm for an hour long appointment with the developmental clinic to go over Quentin’s results with the physician in charge of his case, and then back again just after I picked up Sean from a playdate after school, just as we were getting in for dinner. I swear, when it rains, it pours.