Clearly Alive: Mom's Letter: No Tea!

I’m glad you don’t recall much about that ER visit other than a few moments. I’ll do my best to fill in some of the blanks. I had been in contact with both your primary care physician and endocrinologist. They BOTH instructed me to wait (my blood is boiling now recalling the conversations) to see if you could keep your morning meds in. If you couldn’t keep the meds down THEN I was supposed to take you to the ER & request saline with cortisol. So, that’s mostly what I did, except I didn’t wait for your morning meds. I took you when your vomiting was about 6 minutes apart. You vomited in the car, which meant the episodes were getting closer together.

I walked you into the ER (you wouldn’t have made it from a parking spot) sat you down, tried to tell the attendant what was going on while getting yelled at by a security guard that I was parked in the wrong place & had to move my car. I moved the car and ran back inside and found you sobbing. Again, I told the attendant to call your endocrinologist or the endocrinologist on call, and begged them to hurry up because you were about to vomit again. I felt like I was in a scene from a movie where the character is dead but talking to the living and no one can hear or see her. I was talking, but no one was hearing me.

They finally began paperwork, and the rude male nurse wouldn’t allow me to answer the questions he was barking at you. I told him you were due to vomit. He didn’t listen and made you stand on the scale. Then you vomited on him! I actually was sad that there wasn’t more in your stomach to deposit on him. He then let me answer questions and took you back to a room.

The nurse came in and complimented you on what pretty white porcelain skin you had, stating that it was almost the color of the sheets. Her kind compliment broke the tension and I just laughed (it was better than crying) and told her that usually you weren’t porcelain white, but even extremely ill, you were beautiful. She smiled (knowing that I was scared and frustrated) and calmly stated that they were in contact with your endocrinologist and would take very good care of you. She winked at me later while she was commenting on the color returning to your face because we both knew you were getting better.

At that time, we didn’t have the knowledge or the key words “Addisonian Crisis” or “Cortisol Dependent”, and certainly had NO idea how life threatening this was or is. Surprisingly, neither did the doctors or the ER staff! We didn’t know that you appeared coherent but in reality, your brain had shut down and wasn’t functioning properly.

Thankfully we lived through it and learned. NEVER again will you vomit more than once without going to the ER and we now have medical documentation to explain why immediate treatment is necessary.