Urgent care

I had brought my daughter into the urgent care centre, thinking she was dehydrated.  Which, she was, but that wasn't the underlying problem.  She was still doing that strange gasping breathing - which honestly, at first I thought was just dramatic. (insert bag over head here) At 2, 3, 4 and 5am, I wasn't sure if it needed immediate attention, and thought "well, if we get some sleep, we can handle waiting in urgent care longer, and I'll be in a better position to drive".

The lovely triage nurse recognized the situation as being serious, and moved us as fast as possible, and brought a wheelchair for my girl to sit in.  Within moments of moving into the back part of the urgent care space, there were 4 nurses, a student nurse, and a doctor all working on my daughter.  They were pulling off her clothes and tossing them at me, while they asked me lots of questions, which I tried to answer clearly. Then one of the nurses pricked her finger and turned to the doctor and said 26.4 and I leaned in and said, "that's her sugar isn't it. That's crazy high". Yes, it was.  "Normal" is 4-7, and I know that even during the glucose tolerance testing with my pregnancies, I've never been over 8.  The doctor confirmed that it was high, and then they got an iv in her, and took blood.  Her skin was grey at this point, and her limbs were mottled and purple, and her hands and feet were icy cold.  One of the nurses said they could smell the sugar on her.

I could only stand back and watch at this point, so I started texting my husband. Reading back over those texts is hard.

"Please pray, please"
"she's incoherent and muddled"
"we might be transferred to children's"
"her system is shutting down"
"thinking diabetic"
"sugars all of whack"
"extremely high, especially since she hasn't eaten"
"getting hydrated now, plus an anti-nauseant"
"lots of heated blankets on her, she was in bad bad shape"
"like, I should have brought her in last night"
"waiting would have been….real bad"

One of the nurses took me by the arm at this point and said that the bloodwork they were doing was a formality, to confirm what they already knew.  My daughter was diabetic, and that our lives were about to change. That they needed to stabilize my daughter enough to transport her to Children's, and we were being moved to their Emergency department when it was safe enough to do it. It was around now that I posted something on Facebook asking for prayers, and started texting my parents and sister. I just felt by texting someone or doing something was more useful than standing there just watching my daughter look sicker than I could imagine, struggling to breathe.