Briefly Blue

We were sitting at the practice field when the playful sound in her voice changed. I turned around to see why she was fussing and thats when I noticed she had begun to tremble. Her entire body was shaking and then she got very, very pale. I called Dave at the office and asked him to meet me at home. I left the kids at the field and called another mom to let her know I had to leave and couldn't really explain. In the few minutes it had taken me to get to the house she began to vomit really violently. I unloaded her and placed her on my bed to look her over. As Dave walked in the house he said, "She's blue. She's turning blue." We grabbed the pulse ox and got a reading of 55. Then 72. He grabbed her up off the bed and we took off running toward the car.

On the drive to the hospital(its literally 5 minutes from our front door) he made a call to a friend of ours who is an ER physician to see if he was working tonight. Thank you God that he was. He got us in immediately through the ambulance bay with no wait.

We we left the house Ashley Kate had no capillary refill on her fingers or toes. That's what scared us the most.

In a matter of minutes she settled down. Her color came back. She began to sat at 100%. Her trembling stopped. She looked normal. In fact she looked great. So great that it has left us all a little confused. Its not very often that Dave and both get alarmed at the same time. We pretty much even each other out when it comes to the ups and downs of Ashley's life, but tonight we were both scared. Really scared. Then it was gone.

I'm home now with Blake and Allison and Dave is spending the night at the hospital with Ashley Kate. When I left a few minutes ago she was coloring pictures and signing farm animals. She has no fever. No signs of illness. Her lab work actually came back better than it has in months. Still we all know that something happened. We just don't know what. Our best guess is that some type of vegetation, bacterial more than likely, must have been sitting in the line or maybe on the end of it and when her IV fluids began running right before practice started it got flushed into her blood stream. This is the physicians best guess based on what took place. At that time we think her blood pressure must have plummeted as response to her immune system attempting to ramp itself up as it noticed the "intruder". Until we have a positive blood culture(which we do not at this time) we won't know if our guesses are correct or not. In some ways we are hoping for a positive culture so that we might have some answers, and in others we are hoping its negative so that we can get her out of the hospital and back home tomorrow. As our physician told us on the drive there, "This is the last place you wan't to bring her to tonight, but we have no choice." Dave and I agree. We want her home and as far away from all the germs up there as possible.

Its so hard to explain how things can go from normal to so not normal in just a matter of minutes. Ash was sitting in her car seat coloring with markers and banging on the window with a baseball just minutes before this all began. She showed no signs of illness today. She's played, been happy, silly, and sweet. Then it all fell apart and now its all back together again. I just don't get it so trying to explain it is a little hard. All I know is that I'm thankful her body is getting oxygen again, that she has no fever, and that her blue skin color was only a brief thing. I much prefer her in pink. Not only her clothing, but also her skin.