Sleepover at the A&E

Thursday night a sister in the ward asked if I could come over to help for an hour or so with packing her up since she has to be out of her place by the end of the month.  Jeremy had a user group meeting and so I figured we'd be ok helping for about an hour before Gwendolyn's bedtime.  Ideally taking a young child is not my first choice but this sister sounded desperate so off we went.  I was just finishing up packing up some clothes when I heard the sound of blister pack packaging being messed with.  I turned and saw Gwendolyn had found a package of Quinine Sulfate and was chewing something so immediately I was concerned.  I grabbed her did a mouth sweep but she swallowed whatever she had in her mouth by then so I wasn't sure what to think.  She's never gotten into medication before, not that she's ever had the opportunity but she's getting into the "tasting" phase of her life, (more of that later for another post), and I didn't want to take any chances.  I decided we were done for the evening and took her home and on the way called poison control to ask what I needed to look for in the event she had swallowed some since the lady couldn't tell if any were gone.  She thought I was overreacting showing concern and said it was just some pain medication nothing serious but I wasn't familiar with the medication so I didn't say anything other than I needed to get Gwendolyn home.  The poison control told me to get her to the A&E ASAP so I packed her in the car and off we raced to nearest A&E.  I contacted Jeremy and let him know where we were in the event he got home in our absence and wondered where we were.  After waiting in the children's A&E for 4 hours we finally saw the pediatric doctor who decided due to the nature of the medication and the strength of the dose they wanted to watch her for 12 hours.

It was a long, long night.  We shared a room with a little boy that was thought to have had the mumps. He wasn't a problem but his mom was a obnoxious and kept waking Gwendolyn with all the noise she kept making.  The nurses had to check on him every 2 hours so this went on a lot during the night.  Gwendolyn of course refused to sleep in her own bed and ripped off the monitoring wire as soon as she discovered it the first time we were wakened.  I was pressed up against a wall on my side the entire night with Gwendolyn pressed up tightly next to me.  When the pediatrician came in to check on Gwendolyn at 6am and explained why she kept us there overnight she greeted Gwendolyn with a cheerful "Good Morning."  Gwendolyn growled back and pulled the covers over her head.  We both were very happy to see Jeremy and left the moment we were discharged.  Jeremy was sweet and worked from home so I could get a little much needed nap.  We decided to go out on a date that evening and have someone else tackle the challenge of getting Gwendolyn to bed that night.  Best decision we could have made.