Sunday Morning Emergency

In typical Sunday morning fashion, Iain and William were up before me and downstairs getting something to eat. I followed soon after and by the time I'd found my space at the dining table, and was tucking into my own breakfast, William was being pretty whingey. Then he started complaining that he didn't like his breakfast, and he had a sore mouth, and he was just all over the place. Iain and I talked about what he'd been doing (playing at the fish tank, but he was adamant that he hadn't put his hands in) and what he'd had to eat (Iain had given him a whole walnut), I then started to notice that one of his eyes looked a bit odd - it was swollen - and I got this sudden feeling of, "this is not right". I made the call. Joggies on now - we're going to the hospital. By the time I'd run up the stairs and threw on some clothes, he looked like this: 

Knowing the roads a bit better than Iain, I drove, and by the time we'd gotten to Boulevard de la Paix, the first swollen eye had completely closed over and the second one was on its way too. As the seriousness of things took hold, I was running red lights and I pulled right into the entranceway at the Paediatric Urgences. Iain carried William in and I quickly parked the car and rushed back to the reception. I came through the doors to find no Iain and no William, and no staff, but just an audience of stunned parents staring at me. The panic set in and I began to cry. 

Someone pointed to an access door and said in some sort of broken Franglais "they went there" and I just followed my feet through staff only areas, trying to find them. I was absolutely terrified at this point, not knowing what discovery I was about to make, and then finally, I found them: William hooked up to various machines but thankfully sitting up in bed, and Iain holding his hand talking to him.

The staff were amazing. They treated it as a nut allergy, giving him steroids, other anti inflammatory drugs and respiratory adrenaline. He didn't like the mask but the doctors kept telling him that he was pretending to be a dragon. The staff were happy with the cocktail of drugs at this point and although they'd given him a line, they didn't need to use it for any other drugs. We waited out the day, watching as the swelling slowly went down and he started to return to normal. It was a long day, but thankfully one with a positive outcome and he wasn't admitted. We'd arrived at about 10.30am and it was after 6pm when we finally left, but we got to bring William home with us which was the most important thing. They gave us a load of paperwork and we've now got to see an allergy specialist. What a day. 

This is about 30mins after we arrived:

And then another half hour later once the steroids were beginning to take effect:

And here he is when we got home:

And 24hrs later:

Like I've already said: what a day. And something I never want to have to go through again. We've now got a bit of a mountain to climb in terms of seeing a specialist (we've been told that we'll need to wait three months!) but we have some emergency drugs should we need them, and we've been told to stay away from nuts in the meantime. Jeez. 

Lorna :-|