You know you have GSD if…. The E.R. nurse knows you by name- or at least by disease

Posted on 11. Mar, 2007 by Jillian in Emergencies, Glycogen Storage Disease Dogs, Glycogen Storage Disease Type 1A, GSD Resources, Hospitals

Yesterday our 14 month old got sick. His “normal” friends had a bad fever, and horrible aches and pains. That’s how it started out, but after a few hours we believe his lactate levels rose too high and he began throwing up. We switched gears to giving him a slow gravity feed of one ounce every half hour through his g-tube. After a couple hours of that, his blood sugar was still barely hovering at 70 and he was throwing up every 20 minutes or so. Next we tried hooking him up to a continuous feed where the pump would allow even smaller amounts of formula at a time. Unfortunately, that didn’t work either. Eventually we called our excellent specialist in Florida to see if giving our son a pill called Zofran to ease the nausea would be alright. It was, so we had our gastroenterologist call it in for us. Unfortunately, after two pharmacies, the pill didn’t work anyway.

Just before midnight on Saturday, my husband had to take him to the emergency room while I stayed home with the other three. I called ahead to see if they would prepare an I.V. so it would be ready for my son when they got there. The nurse I spoke with said she couldn’t do anything until they arrived, but fortunately another nurse overheard the conversation. She had been our son’s E.R. nurse a few weeks ago and understood that by the time he got there his blood sugar would probably be in the 55-65 range and dropping fast. When my husband walked through the door, he was immediately ushered back where this exceptional nurse had the D-10 I.V. ready. Sadly they had to place the I.V. in his head instead of his arm, but how grateful we are that she remembered us, and cared so much about our child’s well-being. They were later admitted to the hospital and will hopefully be released tonight or more likely tomorrow.