On November 1st, 2018, I started throwing up. My parents didn’t know what was wrong. My emesis slowly became darker and greener throughout the night. My parents drove me to the ED at Primary Children’s. The abdominal x-ray showed a small bowel obstruction. I was admitted and was NPO for bowel rest. Surgery was following my case, but didn’t want to surgically intervene unless they needed to. My bowels healed on their own with rest, and I was able to start eating again after a few days.
There was a documentation error on admission, somehow my weight had been charged as 4.88kg – when it reality I was 3.3kg. 5 days later when they checked my labs, my sodium was too high to measure. The machine read >185 (normal is 131-143)
I had to have my heel poked every two hours for the next 5 days to monitor my sodium levels. If your sodium level increases or decreases too rapidly, it can cause severe brain damage, seizures, and death. Thankfully none of that happened to me. I had to be placed on oxygen from fluid overload, and needed a blood transfusion from all the lab draws.
My mom was the one who caught the error of the fluids, and the error of the documented weight. This has caused her to have severe PTSD. (As if she didn’t have control issues to begin with…)
Thankfully I was able to discharge home 10 days later; healthy, and alive.