Just another Friday…

Last night, as we were going through our usual bedtime routine, Mary Clare decided to spice things up a bit.  McCanless was already in her bed asleep at 8 pm.  (She has strep throat, by the way, which is the only reason she would be in the bed asleep at such an hour.)  I plopped Mary Clare up onto the counter as I do every night.  She had her juice in one hand and her paci in the other.  I turned my back to grab her syringe for her Blood Pressure medication, which happened to be sitting beside her.  We have done this twice a day for her entire life.  She takes 2 ml’s of her Enalapril.  Once in the morning and once at night.  In the split second that I was grabbing the syringe, I heard her sucking on her sippy cup, or so I thought. I turned around and she had the bottle of Enalapril turned up.

Funny, I didn’t panic.  I’m not sure if it is just my personality or that I’m so used to unexpected events in my household after having three high maintenance people living with me.  It also helped that I remembered one of my heart mom friends, Maddie‘s mom, from Washington State, telling me about her daughter who had an over-dosage of her BP med for a couple of weeks.  (Pharmacy’s fault, but she was fine, thank goodness.)  So that gave me some comfort, I’m sure.

Nonetheless, I grabbed the phone to call Mel, who was at a city function.  I couldn’t get him so I called MUSC….and long story short, we ended up going to our local hospital to be monitored for four hours.  (Well, I wasn’t monitored.  Mary Clare was monitored.)  All was fine.  Her BP did drop pretty low, but not low enough for intervention. The nurses were more concerned about her “low” oxygen levels because they were in the upper 70’s.  I had to explain numerous times that her O2 wasn’t our concern.  This was about her BP.  Upper 70’s are fine for her, especially when she was sleeping!  Such is life with a heart kiddo.

So today, we’re home.  Vegging right now.  McCanless is ill because I won’t allow her to skate through the house (sick, remember?) and I took Mary Clare to school for a couple of hours to get out of the house.  She certainly hasn’t been acting like her BP is running low.  Quite the contrary.  She was running circles around McCanless this morning and begged me to take her to the park at 8 AM despite our late night rendezvous.  So, pre-school it was!

Life is back to normal.  McCanless is fussing.   Mary Clare is happily blue.  Mel is filming some local television interview and I’m tired and thankful.  And happy.

Lesson learned.

My sweetheart in her princess pj’s fast asleep at the hospital.  Even the constant BP cuff squeezes and the beeping of the pulse oximeter going berserk over her “low” levels didn’t arouse sleeping beauty.

6 Comments