So I left girls camp the night before the rest of the group were leaving so I could go home and check on Scott. When I got home, he was sitting in the recliner, watching a movie and snacking on something. I checked his sugar and it was 45! Why he was okay then but needed the paramedics the night before baffled me, but I made him something to eat to raise his sugar a little and then kept an eye on him.
A week to the day he had been watching tv all day with our granddaughter, Kaydee. My parents had stopped by to visit about 4:30 for a few minutes and Scott decided to take a shower and then lay down until dinner was done. I started to make dinner about 5 PM after mom and dad had left, and about 5:45 I went to wake Scott up to eat before I had to leave for work. When I went in to wake him, he was rigid... I thought he was playing his dumb dead hamster trick again, until I heard him making a funny noise like he was trying to breathe.
I rolled him over to see him better and he was in the middle of a seizure. I took the pillow out from under his head to open his air wave better and then checked his sugar. I could not get a reading it was so low, but I was confused as he had been eating all day! I gave him only half his Insulin dose though his sugar had been in the high 300s earlier, because I was afraid it would go low. I yelled for Tiffany to call the paramedics while I tried to talk to Scott and get some kind of response. I was terrified beyond anything I had felt before.
The paramedics came and put an IV line into him and gave him pure glucose to get his sugar up. His sugar read 29! I couldnt believe it... how could that be when he had eaten all day... and I mean all day! His heart rate though was down to 34!~ I at first thougth of a heart attack as he was so cold and clammy to the touch, and he was sweating buckets!
A couple minutes later Scott responded and when he saw all the paramedics on the bed he says, "Hey, I remember you guys, you were here last week, too!" I had to laugh.... I couldnt hold it back, it was a nervous laugh like the ones that slip out and you can't control, but it was a typical Scott response.
Because his heart rate was still pretty low, they packed him up onto the ambulance, and I rode in front, and we took him in to the main hospital. Tiffany called Jon and Spence to let them know, and then called my parents. A little bit later my parents came back into the emergency room, my moral support..... They wondered what had happened as they had just left not too long before than and he was fine!
We were there for about 4 hours, they checked his sugar readings and monitored his heart, and took blood tests. We just stayed by his side and waited for the test results. After about an hour he was starting to feel a bit better. He kept pestering us to get a news paper as Michael Jackson had died that day and he wanted to read the paper. It didn't make it into the papers yet, but we couldnt get him to understand that, so finally we watched the news.
A little after our oldest son, Jon, and my dad had given Scott a blessing, he started to improved. The cold drenching sweat had stopped, his sugar leveled, and his coloring got better. Problem is, the enzyme they check for a heart attack doesnt generally show up in the blood tests until about 4 or 5 hours after the fact, and at 4 hours they were sending us home!
About a couple months later we took him to see a Cardiologist and had some tests done. We found he has a leak in one of his valves but it isnt too alarming yet. Note worthy to keep and eye on, though.
It was quite a scary experience, and one I hope not to experience again for quite a long time. You are never really prepared to have to go through an experience like that.... I still to this day, and have since his strokes, check to make sure he is still breathing when he is asleep. If he is awake enough he gets upset with me and says... "Yes, I am still alive, and breathing! Stop that!" And I always thought I was being sneaky with it and didnt want him to know what I was doing.
We have not had any episodes since, and hope not to for a very, very long time!
Friday, May 14, 2010
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