William in the ER. Take 2.

Yesterday we decided to let William try one small bite of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at around 4:30. Our pediatrician said it would be ok to try him on peanuts now. We knew he had a dairy allergy, but thought that was it (or so we hoped). Turns out he is highly allergic to peanuts as well. A few minutes after he ate it he started coughing and wheezing badly. We gave him some Benadryl and were hoping that would take care of it. He seemed ok after that for a little while.

Maybe 15-20 minutes later he started coughing more and started getting really itchy. We grabbed the Epipen and called our pediatrician. She said to bring him to the ER and give him the injection if he couldn’t breathe or couldn’t swallow his own saliva.

We rushed him over to Shady Grove and they started an Albuterol nebulizer right away. And by this point he had hives concentrated on his upper body, and there was even more swelling around his eyes. He was also having a lot of trouble breathing and his pulse-ox was dropping. They gave him an injection of epinephrine and put in an IV for some other meds as well.

He responded well and his breathing was getting back to normal within the hour. They kept him for observation for the next 5 hours and we finally got out at around 10:45. He did so well through it all. There was much grace. The medical staff was fantastic. We actually saw a doctor almost immediately (pretty rare). The two nurses and the resident were are also very helpful and kind. The last nurse was a little kooky, but in a good way. She told us a lot of helpful stuff that we really hadn't heard before, like if we give him an EpiPen injection, we need to call 911 because he has got to come in and get monitored ("That's the stuff they give to people when they go into asystolic cardiac arrest! It's serious - we need to keep an eye on you!") Also she echoed everyone else at the ER's stance that if there is ANY respiratory distress we need to give him the shot. "Benadryl ain't gonna do nothing! You need to give 'em that injection and call 911!"

As far as the treatment went, the nebulizer, even though he had one last November with the milk reaction, really freaked him out. That started a series of things that were rough on him. The Epi injection was the worst of it. It's a fairly sizable needle that had to go into his thigh. It was hard having to hold him down and watch him go through that. The IV wasn't much better... we had to keep him very still since obviously they were going into a little vein, not a big muscle like with the epi. It was a struggle to not burst out crying watching him go through that and seeing Amy's eyes begin to tear up as she held his other arm.

He handled it all so well. He said so many cute things throughout the whole ordeal... it is hard to remember them all. A couple that stuck out were:

- William, on the way to the hospital: (wheez) (wheez) Metro Bus..... (wheez) (wheez) Another (wheez) Metro Bus... (wheez) (wheez) (wheez) School Bus... (wheez) Two school bus... (wheez)

- Me at around 9:00pm : it's been a rough day, huh, William?
- William: yeah. it was very sad.

- Me: we need to change your diaper.
- William: yeah. there's no changing table in here. maybe dada-win'hum go home and 'change you' and come back to doctor's. (like most kids, he often speaks of himself in the second or third person)


The three of us got to spend some 'quality' time in the ER watching what seemed like never-ending Thomas the Train DVDs. (Literally, that was by far the most TV William has ever watched in his life.)


Thanks for praying for our little man and we'd appreciate continued prayer that the reaction doesn’t reoccur (as it can in some cases). He will be on steroids for four more days.