Gracie's Illness - PICU @ Victoria General Hospital - Day 1

October 27th, 2009

On the helicoptor looking down towards Nanaimo's Departure Bay Beach.  A place that Gracie and I went to often.

By early afternoon, Gracie and I were on a helicoptor being flown to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at Victoria General Hospital.  Gracie was so restless, I wanted to just pick her up and hold her on the way to Victoria but she needed to be strapped on to the stretcher.  I tried to think about other things, as I was only now beginning to realize how serious things were.  Gracie moaned and groaned, and she managed to fall asleep for a few minutes; the helicoptor ride only took about 20 minutes.  It was loud and we had to wear a earmuffs that had a little mic attached to it.

Starting to land in Victoria, BC, at VGH

I remember being walked off of the landing pad and following some people, along with Gracie's stretcher, to a private elevator inside the doors of the hospital.  We were taken up to the 4th floor (pediatrics) and brought to a small corner where the PICU was located.  I was unhappy that I was not allowed to follow Gracie in while she got settled, and had to sit in a parent waiting room across the hall.  It seemed to take forever for the doctor to come and talk to me.  His name was Dr. Beck, and he would be one of Gracie's intensive care doctors.  He said that Gracie was severely dehydrated and that because of this, her potassium and sodium levels were extremely dangerous.  Potassium is essential for regulating how the heart beats, and when potassium levels are too high or too low, it can cause an abnormal heartbeat.  If the potassium is low, it can cause muscle weakness.  Sodium helps to regulate how much water is in the body; it also aids in helping transmit signals in the brain and in the muscles.  If a child becomes dehydrated, they can become confused, weak, lethargic, ect.  This explains why Gracie was so trembley and disorientated while she tried to stand, why she was so irritable and restless, and why she had attacked my green jello.  Dr. Beck told me that it would take him about 48 hours to turn the damage from the dehydration around. 

It was finally time to go in and see Gracie.  The nurses came and showed me what the routine was to be able to go in to the PICU.  First you had to wash your hands with the hand sanitizer outside the main door.  Gracie was in an isolation room on the very far righthand side; there were two isolation rooms that were glassed in, and 4 beds in the middle (the PICU was shaped like a crescent).  Next I had to go in to a small room that was attached to Gracie's room, although still protected, and put on a gown and mask, and then wash my hands again with soap/water and hand sanitizer.  Then it was time to see my little girl.  Gracie looked so small in her crib; the nurses had her kind of propped up a bit.  They were trying so hard to settle Gracie but she was just so irritated and restless.  The nurses even brought in a little DVD player with a Dora movie to try to entertain her, but it did not work.  Eventually they had to give her some chloral hydrate to make her drowsy and sleepy; it kind of worked.

It was shift change at 6:30pm, so I had to leave Gracie for an hour while the nurses did their meeting and changeover.  I was shown to where I was going to stay on the pediatric floor; Gracie's dad was now there as well and had to stay in the same room with me.  We were lucky that the hospital was going to allow us both to stay, because normally it is one parent per patient.

I was back in Gracie's room by 7:45pm and staying by her side.  She still was extremely restless and was not breathing well.  At 8:30pm, Dr. Beck was called back in to take a look at her; she was not breathing very well.  At 9:00pm, Dr. Beck placed Gracie on the ventilator.  It took an hour for him to have her ready; I had to leave the room again while he prepared her and finished up; he had to cut her purple jammies off of her :-( .  They also added more port IVs so that they did not have to share IV lines, making it easier to keep track of different medications that she was going to be on.