Scary Moment

Yesterday Savannah was doing great. She was on minimal pain meds and eating well. She was playing on the living room floor when I noticed a drip of blood coming from her mouth and then another from her nose. No big deal we expected some occasional bleeding even though she really had not bled since the day after her surgery. Then all of a sudden she vomited what seemed to be a large amount of blood. We immediately packed Sav up and headed back to children's hospital. By the time we got to the ER she had a fair amount of blood coming from her nose and mouth.

I have heard horror stories from friends that had to wait for hours at Children's emergency room before they were seen by a doctor or even just a physicians assistant. So I honestly expected to have to wait. Instead I walk in, the triage nurse takes one look and immediately escorts us to a trauma room. They immediately start an IV line and drawing blood for tests. We had a doctor in the room and looking at Savannah all within ten minutes of driving up to the ER. I was impressed and a little scared at the same time. It must be serious to get this kind of attention.

The ER doctor looked at Savannah determined that she was stable for the moment and paged Savannah's doctor who had seen her during her entire hospitalization and he said he would be on his way. An hour later and her doctor was in the ER. He was a bit stumped by the bleeding which had by then subsided. Her blood counts were still good and he left it up to us. She could be admitted overnight for observation or go home and keep an eye on her. We decided to go home.

While waiting for the paperwork Savannah started bleeding again. Her doctor came in and decided that he would admit her to the critical care unit for observation overnight. There was no way to stop the bleeding without cutting off an airway and he wanted to be sure that she did not get anemic or dehydrated. About two hours later Savannah spit up the largest blood clot/coagulated blood chunk I have ever seen. The nurse was confident after that happened, that Savannah would stop bleeding. Sure enough the bleeding stopped and never returned.

This morning she was discharged with a new pair of "no-no's" (arm restraints) since hers were covered in blood and sent on our way. Her repair still looks good and does not seem to be affected at all thankfully. So hopefully this is the last bump in the road and we can finish healing uneventfully!