April 25th, 2014

Life can change in a few seconds.

On Friday, April 25 we were all in the living room watching a family movie… it was around 6:45pm. Joey had stayed home from work for a couple of days due to severe knee/leg pain that made him barely able to walk. He was trying to take it easy and put his leg up with ice and advil on board, per doctor orders. A few of our kids were about 3 or more days in with a bad fever and head cold virus, Abigail included. We were taking it easy and being lazy while giving kids advil and Zero Vitamin Water. I had ran to the grocery store earlier in the day and when I came home, Joey mentioned that Abigail had vomited up a little purplish stuff. He had thought it was medicine, but I told him I hadn’t given her any colored meds. In the midst of everything, not much was thought of the “colored vomit”.

So there we were, watching a movie… Abigail was doing her usual retching and vomiting, made worse by her head cold… so me and Josiah were both jumping up to help Abigail vomit (Joey was trying to rest his knee)… Abigail started retching, so Josiah jumped up to help her. He stood behind her to push her head forward so she wouldn’t choke… I was on my way over to take over (being 37 weeks pg, I was moving slow)… just as I was near, Josiah yelled that she was vomiting blood. I got to her side and helped her vomit as a surge of thick blood shot out. Joey jumped up and said “what should I do??”. A couple seconds passed and then the blood started gushing out again including clots. It seemed like many minutes of it… I yelled for Joey to call 911. I started crying and praying aloud. Josiah started crying. Within seconds of Joey calling 911, we heard sirens (benefit of living right in town!). Joey opened the front door and the fire truck was there. Abigail had just stopped vomiting. Josiah had gathered the other kids onto one couch (except Hadassah was in the bathroom and completely unaware of all that was taking place… she didn’t come out til it was over). As the firemen came in, the ambulance arrived. They saw the blood covered beach towel and immediately went to work. They said Abigail’s pulse was almost 200 and she was going into shock. They tried to start an IV, but decided it was safer to just take her immediately. The ambulance driver called his supervisor to get permission to bring her straight to the children’s hospital and bypass their usual first stop. They loaded her up on the gurney and Joey went with them. He said they had sirens and sped at top speed while working to get an IV and fluids started, while calling ahead to the ER at the children’s hospital. Joey said when they got to the ER they wheeled her to a room that had several doctors lined on each side, ready and waiting for her. They had to cut her clothes off and all of them started working on her at once. Meanwhile, I was at home trying to figure out what my next steps should be… trying to comfort kids and stay calm myself…

I called my step mom, thinking she was the nearest person available to come over, but had forgotten that she was actually out of town. My dad and 3 of my local sisters were also out of town. I tried calling my one sister who was here locally, but couldn’t reach her. I was getting nervous and starting to panic. I was rushing around doing everything I could think of, but didn’t seem to be getting anything done. I talked to my dad, my other sister, a sister-in-law, and finally got ahold of my local sister. She immediately said they would come over to take my kids so that I could go to the hospital. In the middle of it all, my neighbor came over bearing a hot meal and fresh muffins… she had watched Joey and Abigail leave in the ambulance, so offered her support.

Joey was texting me things like “they are placing a central line in her neck”… “they are going to do blood transfusions”… “what are her allergies?”… “when was the last time she had ibuprofen?”… “they said it looks bad, don’t know if she’ll make it”… etc. I was frantic to get down there, but was trying to pack bags for my kids. We had no gas in the van and the last $20 we had was in Joey’s wallet… thankfully my sister gave me gas money! After getting gas, it was already 9:30pm by the time I was making the 45minute drive to the hospital!

When I got to the hospital and up to Abigail’s room in the picu around 10:15pm, the room was full of people. At least 4 nurses and the picu doctor were there. The room was bright and everyone was rushing around and yelling orders. Abigail was pure white and shaking like crazy. They had an oxygen mask on her, a central line in her neck, IVs in her feet, arms, and head… and bruises elsewhere where they’d tried getting more IVs going. She had a ng tube draining blood coming from her nose, a tube draining blood from her G and J tubes. They were just getting her first blood transfusions started. She had vomited another huge amount of blood and pooped large amounts of blood. They placed a breathing tube soon after I got there and sedated her. Her heart rate was 200-250 and blood pressure dropping to 40/20. They were pushing meds in every possible IV port. Heart and blood pressure meds, pain and sedative meds, IV fluids, blood going in via IV pump and two nurses pushing blood in via IV. It was just one thing after another. We sat off to the side, simply and helplessly watching them fight to keep our daughter alive. She was hemorrhaging, but they didn’t know from where. And so it continued on into Saturday, April 26th.

Part 2

Part 3