Shock

We had a bit of a rough week this week.

Tuesday morning after Paul went to work, I was at home getting the kids ready for school and getting myself ready for work, I received a call from the office. It was Hennie, who works for us calling me to me she had just called an Ambulance for Paul.

Paul woke up sometime in the wee hours of the morning with some slight abdominal pain, he got up and took some Peptobismal and went back to bed. A few hours later the pain woke him up again, we poked around in his own abdomen and wondered if it might be an ulcer. He went back to sleep. He got up with his alarm about 6 a.m. and went to work. He tried to eat breakfast but was unable to.

At the office he saw two patients and then hung a sign on the door "To Sick to Work" and he went into the break room. He started sweating profusely and vomiting. We got lucky and Hennie decided to come to work a bit early, when she got there Paul was in real bad way and she called an ambulance and then me. Our office is about 4 blocks from the office and Henine knew that Paul could make it there without the call. That should give an idea of how bad he was doing.

After I got the call, I was feeling pretty shaky myself. I did not say anything to the kids, I did not have any clue what was wrong with Paul and did not worry them before I took them to school. Paul had played hockey on Monday night and when I asked him how his game was he said it was 'rough'. He does not like to play when they hove rough games, it is frustrating to him and leaves him sore. He had a huge welt on elbow where a puck managed to hit him in the small space between his pads. The phone call from Hennie had me wondering if he had taken a hit that damaged his internal organs, I was thinking spleen, which can cause the symptoms Paul was experiencing.

I dropped the kids at school and went straight to RIH (our local hospital) Hennie called all the people booked that day for appointments with Paul and I.

At RIH I learned that the ALS unit is the one that picked Paul up at the office. Not good the ALS Ambulance is for people in big time distress, that's the ambulance with all the life support and the most highly trained emergency technicians.

When the ambulance pulled into the bay at the hospital Paul broke out into a very strange rash. if you draw a line across your chest from armpit to armpit and coloured everything about that bright red and added a ton a little red speckles above that line and including his arms you would have a damn good idea of what Paul looked like. His face was a bit swollen and had small dots on it as well.

He was given epinephrine immediately by the attending MD, the rash clued them in that he was most likely having a severe systemic allergic reaction.

We got lucky and two of nurses up there that day are patients of ours, they filled me in and treated us very well. The epinephrine did the trick and Paul leveled out in a couple of hours. They kept him there for observation until about 4:30 that afternoon and then sent him with an epi-pen in the event something like this happens again.

It took a couple of days and Paul is back to his normal self. We keep puzzling over what may have caused the reaction. He can't think of anything he ate or did differently in the 24-48 hours that preceded his allergic response. A day or two later he remembered he slept on a feather pillow and he does not think he has ever used one before. We have no idea if that would cause the reaction he had.

Everyone around here is safe and well, so don't worry about us. I did get razzed a bit at the hospital there was a nurse on duty who happened to be there when I took Sebastian in a few years ago, was my nurse when I had the abdominal pain in the ER last year and saw Paul come in. When I left the hospital that afternoon, he told me he would save a bed us. Let's hope that bed sits empty for a VERY long time.