Sophie's World

8:30 PM (Susan posting): It's been quite a day. Sophie woke up this morning around 7:00, saying that she had to go potty and that her tummy hurt. Randall took care of her, and she went back to sleep (our first clue that something was up). When the home health care nurse came to check Sophie's blood levels at 9:30, Sophie was still asleep. I got her up, and she was totally limp and lethargic (but conscious). She wouldn't sit up, and she clearly just wasn't herself. He heart rate was low, her blood pressure was very low, and her temperature was 95.

I called the doctor, and he said it sounded like her blood sugar was low. The nurse checked it, and it was 40 (apparently, that's very low). I gave her orange juice and gogurt, and it was up before too long. The doctor said it may have been a random thing, but it can also be associated with infection, so he asked us to go to the local ER to have her blood checked, draw a blood culture, and begin administering antibiotics.

Given our recent experiences with the local ER, we decided to have her transported by EMS, hoping that would get them to treat her more seriously. I knew we were in trouble when the EMS told the ER as we approached that he was bringing in a diabetic 3-year old with low blood sugar (I think there's a huge difference between diabetes and cancer, but I'm no doctor). They put her in a private triage room immediately, but did nothing with her for over an hour. When our doctor called to check on her, the ER doctor told him we had "just arrived" (when we had been there for an hour at least). They finally drew blood and put her on normal saline (instead of the dextrose I'm fairly sure he wanted her to have), and eventually, they started the antibiotic.

When the blood results finally came back, they showed her white counts to be elevated, which may be a sign of infection, so our doctor asked them to discharge her so we could drive her to Chapel Hill. We finally arrived at about 4:30, and her room was ready. Amazingly, it's the same big room we've been in both other times we've been hospitalized. Her blood sugar was kind of low again by the time we were admitted, but it's been fine ever since.

Since this is the second time she's had problems with her blood sugar (the other time was in the clinic when she was pretty far down the list of kids having spinal taps), Dr. Gold said he wants to call in an endocrinologist to meet with us tomorrow. I don't know if he's going to run any tests or just give us advice about how to avoid this in the future. They also want to watch the results of the blood culture tomorrow, but Dr. Gold says she'll probably be able to go home tomorrow afternoon (but we've heard that before--we won't hold our breath).

Elisabeth was home with Bill (Randall's dad) and Donna, while they all waited for Randall to come home (he had driven to Fayetteville for a church conference, and I called and left a message telling him what was going on--he left as soon as he could). Elisabeth was pretty upset to see Sophie be taken away in an ambulance, but by the time Randall arrived, she was over it. Elisabeth stayed with church friends while Randall came to the local ER to pick me up and drive us to Chapel Hill. He left around 7:30 to stay with Elisabeth tonight. Elisabeth is still having some ear pain, but she seems to be doing fine.

Sophie is happily eating chocolate pudding (or should I say "puddin") and watching Blue's Clues. I hope she won't stay up too late tonight. Oh, and Randall and I had a really nice dinner out last night. We ended up going to a very good restaurant in Dunn and really enjoyed ourselves. I guess that was preparation for what we would face today.