She's Going To Be Fine

As I sat in the ER Sunday night, holding Sage in my arms while a mother's worst fears ran through my mind, I wasn't so sure that I would get to hear those words. I prayed for them over and over all the while telling Sage, "You have to wake up, Mommy needs you to be okay."

With tears of relief and gratitude I'm writing now to let all of you who were praying us through that ordeal that Sage came home to Nana and Papa's yesterday and is back to normal. For all of you who prayed, thank you so much--if I could I would give each one of you a hug right now. Those of you who are reading about this for the first time, it is only because there wasn't time for me to call you. Here is the quick version of what happened.

Sunday I took the girls to Fargo and left them for about four hours at my mother-in-law's house while I took some time off for myself. When I came back at about five, Sage was sleeping on her chair and Bev said she had been sleeping for about 40 minutes. I let her sleep a little longer before I went to wake her up and once I started to get her up it was pretty clear something was wrong. No matter what I did to try to wake her (I even brought her outside in the winter cold to try and jar her awake) the biggest response I could get from her was muffled groan or a drugged cry. We took her to the ER and went through about four hours of blood tests, urine tests, a cat scan and many questions. The first answer they gave us was that she had tested positive for marijuana. Imagine my shock at being told that! Thankfully this was shortly taken out of the equation and we learned that the test they administer is not very specific and what Sage had in her was labeled as marijuana. My mother-in-law has some very strong medication and to respect her privacy I'm not going to go into the details but from what we can guess, Sage swallowed one of them. Bev did remember spilling a bottle the week earlier and she thought she had picked them all up, which, I don't hold against her at all. It was an accident that could have happened anywhere, including our house as well. We will know for sure in a day or two what exactly it was that Sage swallowed when the lab results come back from Mayo.

Once they knew the reason for Sage's behavior, they pumped some charcoal into her stomach and sent her to the pediatric ICU to be observed for the night. I was able to talk to Brent during this which was a great relief and my parents also drove to Fargo that evening and stayed with me through it all. Brent's Dad, Bruce and his wife, Jane, watched Clare for me that night and all day Monday. I stayed with Sage Sunday night and every hour a nurse would come into our room to try and wake her and also to check vitals. They were closely watch her respiration and blood pressure since that is what the drug would have affected but both of these stayed normal. It was truly as if I awoke from a nightmare when at 4:20am I heard Sage say from her bed, "Hi Mommy. Daddy's in the desert."

They kept us there another night because they wanted to do an MRI (that came back fine) and to make sure she was acting like her normal self before they released her.

This has definitely given me a wake up call for myself to educating the girls more about not eating things they find that look like candy and to take more precautions when it comes to removing toxic things from their reach.

I have given a glossed over version of this experience but mainly because I don't want to relive parts of that time and also because the main point is that, praise the Lord, she is going to be fine.