Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Overlooking the Obvious

I keep "writing" blog posts in my mind but they never make it any farther than that since I'm usually driving or falling asleep at the time. There's a lot to catch up on including Anellah's adoption finalization, the way Capper is growing like crazy, how we're spending the last few days of summer before school resumes (being hecka busy is the answer), and yesterday. I'll start with yesterday and work in reverse.

Anellah had had a cold for a couple days, nothing major just a runny nose and cough. Capper and Daniel had it too but thankfully I was spared the bug. Yesterday morning I was feeling overwhelmed and spent, I hadn't gotten much sleep for a few nights in a row and I was super frustrated with Anellah who had been whining all morning. I kept giving myself pep-talks telling myself to be patient with her, she's always difficult when she's on the tail end of an illness and by the next day she'd be fine. Eventually she whined her way up to her room and I thought she fell asleep. I went up and put a blanket on her then laid down too even though I felt I should get stuff done I knew I just needed a rest and Capper was also asleep so it was a good opportunity! Within a couple of minutes I heard Anellah cry a strange cry...I'll spare you the details of everything but when I went to her room she was unresponsive. I spent 20 torturous minutes waiting for the paramedics to arrive and by the time they arrived I had already administered her emergency medication and she was fearfully coming back to full consciousness.

We spent the rest of the day and evening at the hospital, it took a lot of convincing and some harsh words from the doctors at UCSF but Children's Hospital finally allowed us to be discharged home as we (and her usual doctors) felt she was better off at home than staying overnight in the hospital.

My self pep-talks about being patient with Anellah had caused me to overlook the most obvious cause of her whining. Her blood sugar had dropped so low she could have died and her attitude was my big fat warning sign that I brushed aside. How often do we do that in life? How often do I get so caught up in how tired or frustrated or overwhelmed I am that I lose perspective of what's really important in life? It was a scary reminder but a lesson I won't soon forget.

We are thanking God that she was home with me when it happened rather than at daycare or school, that I had the wits about me to give her emergency medication as I figured out what was happening, and that she seems to be fine physically. She is still scared and wanted to sleep with the light on last night and didn't want us to leave her room. I believe she had some scary hallucinations during the episode but this has been a good opportunity to talk about how God protects us and he won't let "the muffin dog" get us while we're sleeping. :) 

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