As any parent can attest, the worst thing you ever want is to have to watch your child suffer. Unfortunately, we had no control over anything and what started out as a normal day turned out to be chaos. Matt went to school and then the nurse called and said he was throwing up. After almost 17 hours of cyclic vomiting and visiting two different Emergency Rooms that were not able to get it under control with multiple doses of IV medicines, we were spent.
We went to the first ER and they let us know that since he was a minor they couldn’t admit him but they could try to get it under control. After about six hours we opted to head to the Childrens ER so that they could admit him, if needed.
Talk about feeling helpless, when a typical kid asks you to please make it stop hurting, it’s rough, but when you have a non-verbal kid that is signing “Help” and throwing up and crying; it kills you, and makes you feel so helpless, exhausted and weary.
What concerned us the most was, he did not have anything left to vomit and we were seeing traces of blood, spiking fever and Matthew’s obsessively pointing to his head telling us it hurts. The ER doctors tried medicines to relieve his anxiety, pain and control the reflux but nothing fazed it.
We finally had to asked if they could please try stronger medicines and they gave him morphine to help knock him out. Thank God that we got all the tests and all came negative with exception to inflamed esophagus, throat and stomach, and white cells count were extremely high.
Once the vomiting stopped, Matt was admitted to ensure hydration, inflammations were monitored. 4 hours of non vomiting and Matt was able to retain oral medicine, a little soft food, and they let us head home.
With only 3 hours of sleep in the past 2-3 days, the sight of our beds and the smell of our familiars made us appreciate the “love of family and friends”.
Thank you for all the text messages, and your prayers. We felt your love and relief while you all are flooding God with your prayers. It made such a huge difference. We are taking it slow, containing the low grade fever, and while we are seeing Matthew rebounding back to his happy self, he is still fighting exhaustion. This child never naps, and seeing him listening to his body makes this mama heart happy.
Ultimately, we still don’t know what the cause is and/or how to prevent it, in the future, but thankfully we are home and he is doing 100% better.
