When Having Your Kids Like Veggies is a Bad Thing

Friday was Megan's birthday, but it was fairly low key as most of our plans were for Saturday. We let her pick what she wanted for dinner, which was grilled cheese sandwiches, shrimp and green beans. Kylie was quiet through dinner and didn't eat almost anything. We finally asked her if she felt ok. Meg piped up "Kylie ate mushrooms from the backyard!" All of our kids love mushrooms, but we have told them repeatedly not to eat ones from the ground. We try and make sure to pick any before the kids see them, but we occasionally miss one or two. Kylie found a patch and ate two whole mushrooms. We called the nurse hotline for our pediatrician and they told us to call poison control. Poison control told me to take her to the children's hospital and that they were calling ahead to let them know we were coming.

I called Brittney and drove over to get her so Rob and I could both go. As I'm driving to get Brittney, I called a friend and she sent her husband over to our house to help Rob give Kylie a blessing (in our church priesthood holders have the ability to give blessings of healing or comfort). Two other friends offered to watch the other kids, but we didn't know how long it would take, so we thought it would be better to have the kids at our house with Brittney.

I drove the car while Rob took care of Kylie, who by this time was throwing up about every three minutes. We hit a horrible rain storm, but made it to the hospital. By the time we got there, Kylie was drifting in and out of consciousness. When we entered the ER, they took one look at Kylie and brought us into the back immediately - I didn't even get time to check her in. They got us into one of the ER rooms and Kylie lost consciousness. They got an IV into her and included some medication to hopefully stop the vomiting. At least it was easy to put the IV in as Kylie wasn't reacting to anything at that point! The doctor told us it was good that she started vomiting so soon as that helped to get the toxins out of her system quickly. The toxins from poisonous mushrooms can cause the liver to shut down if they are not expelled. They checked her liver and fortunately there was no damage. We asked how long it we should expect to be at the hospital so we could give Brittney a time frame. The doctor said at least 24 hours. We called Christy.

Christy dropped what she was doing and drove over to our house. At some point Kylie drifted from unconsciousness into sleep, which made us feel better. The medicine worked and she stopped vomiting, which surprised the doctor as considering the intensity of her reaction to the mushrooms. They told us they were admitting us to the hospital. Rob and I had not packed for an overnight stay. We decided that I would stay and he would drive home. His shirt was fairly dirty as he had taken care of Kylie in the car and carried her into the hospital and there are medications he takes for hypoglycemia that we hadn't brought, so it made sense to send him home. I also didn't think I could handle being away from Kylie and even though Rob felt the same way, he graciously let me be the one to stay.

Kylie opened her eyes shortly after Rob left and asked a few questions. They took us up to our room, which Kylie really liked. For a hospital, it was amazingly homey. It was a children's hospital and all the walls were painted cheerful colors and there were murals and interesting pictures. Kylie's favorite was a tv screen mounted into the wall with a virtual fish tank playing on the screen. We called home and let Kylie talk to Megan as Megan was fairly worried about her. Kylie finally got to sleep after being re-hooked up to multiple monitors. I spent much of the night next to her in the recliner, which was not very comfortable, because she kept getting scared.

She woke around 4am and was thrilled to get to drink gatorade (red, one of her favorite colors) and eat a lunchable (she picked ham). We watched a bit of tv and then went back to sleep. Since she was doing so well, the doctor woke her up at 10am, had her eat breakfast and told us we could take her home! Christy came to pick us up (Rob has some issues with directions - we really need a gps) and we made it home in time to shower and get ready for the circus that afternoon! But that is another post . . .