42

In some ways, this post is a little bit tougher. And in other ways it's easier. The rest of the events with Bryce's kidney (excluding the post-transplant diabetes diagnosis) I wasn't there for. I hadn't met him, so while it's personal because I know it was my husbands history and his story, it was all second hand. This part is where it gets more real and in depth for me. I expect it will bring back emotions I haven't thought about or felt in a while. So, that said: here goes.

We went to Idaho for Christmas 2013 but with Owen only being 4 weeks old we hadn't planned to stay too long. The way it worked out with schedules for everyone we ended up doing the Transplant Party with Cooks the evening of December 27th at Bryce's parents. About the time the party started, Bryce started feeling queasy. He was sick thru the party- flulike symptoms, and then thru the night. We got home Friday evening and he rested and felt a little better and returned to work Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday was New Year's Eve and we had all had a little bit of a flu bug, so we put the kids to bed early and stayed up having a 'Downton Abbey' marathon and eating pizza. New Years Day we took it easy around here at home, Bryce still wasn't feeling real great. We watched some more 'Downton' and then went to bed, planning for Bryce to return to work Thursday January, 2nd.

At some point in the middle of the night I heard Bryce get up out of bed and fall back into the blinds on our bedroom wall. I asked if he was okay, He still had his CPAP mask on, so I couldn't hear what he was saying to me. He fell forward back into bed and was shivering. I put his blankets back on him and snuggled up to help him get warm, then he fell asleep. I assume he'd gotten up to go turn the thermostat up, or go to the bathroom and tripped over one of the cords over by his bed. And I thought the shivering was because he had the chills and a fever from the flu.

The next morning I got up with the kids, and I saw Bryce still in bed. I assumed he was up sick in the night and had called his boss, telling him he wouldn't be coming in. We came downstairs and did our usual morning routine with the kids. 

At 10:40AM my phone rang, it was Bryce's office. 

"Hi, Lissa this is Louise from Bryce's work. Matt just wondered if he was coming in today? He hadn't heard from him yet."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I know he was up sick in the night and I just assumed that he had called you. I'll go talk to him and have him give you or Matt a call."

I looked at my phone as I walked up the stairs, it said 10:42. I was holding new baby Owen and brought him with me. I walked into our room and over to Bryce's side of the bed. 

"Bryce...Bryce...Bryce!" I reached out and touched his shoulder, shaking him just a little. He is a pretty deep sleeper and is hard to wake sometimes. He opened his eyes and closed them again. I tried again. 

"Bryce!" I shook him, he opened his eyes and made eye contact with me for a split second. I told him to wake up. He tried to say something but with his CPAP mask on and the slurred way he was speaking I couldn't tell what he was saying. He closed his eyes again. 

I grabbed him "Bryce! You are really scaring me! If you don't wake up and start talking to me I'm going to call 911!" He closed his eyes. (This was the most terrifying moment of my whole life! I thought he'd had a stroke. And as we established when I was having Jane in the car, he is far too cheap to ever pay for an ambulance. I knew something was up if he was letting me call one.)

I grabbed my phone and dialed 911, got a dispatcher. She asked me questions about Bryce's medical history and his symptoms, asked how he was doing and stayed on the phone with me until the paramedics got here. They were followed closely in a few minutes by the Fire Dept. He was about as responsive to them as he had been to me. They pricked his finger and tested his blood sugar. 

It was 42. 

For Bryce just waking up it should be about 115. They got his CPAP off and an IV in his arm to give him some sugars. He pulled the needle out the first time and we got blood all over the sheets, but the second time they got it taped down and then gave him some stuff in his IV that helped him come to.

He started to slowly come around after they'd been talking to him for about 15 minutes. He didn't remember me trying to wake him up, or falling in the middle of the night. The first thing he remembers is laying in bed and looking up and being surrounded by paramedics and EMT's and me standing there with Owen. They said they thought it was a diabetic coma which happened as a result of when he got the flu, he didn't have an appetite so he wasn't eating much of anything. But he kept taking his pill to keep his blood sugar low, not really thinking about it. Those two things made his blood sugar drop dangerously low.

The EMT's said he was stable and doing okay now so they didn't need to take him to the hospital, but he did need to get in to see his doctor in the next couple days. We called Dr. Senekjian but got his voicemail saying he was out of the country on vacation. Luckily we were able to get ahold of the partner in his practice, who we have worked with from time to time and knows the medical history, Dr. Agarwal. He said Dr. Senekjian would be back in town the beginning of next week and could see Bryce then. In the meantime we were supposed to get in for a full blood panel and stop taking the medication that keeps his blood sugar down. Bryce went in for blood work the following day, but we wouldn't get the results for a few days.

The next couple days were emotionally hard. Bryce had serious anxiety about sleeping- he was afraid every time he fell asleep he wouldn't wake up. I had the same fears, it was terrifying. We got small bottles of juice, kept them by his bed and set an alarm for in the middle of the night and he would wake up and drink them to keep his blood sugar up. When I got up in the mornings I would wake him up, just to make sure he was okay. We were checking his sugars a lot, afraid of them getting too low. He was able to get a prescription for some Ambien which helped him sleep. I didn't sleep much, although I'm not sure how much of that I can attribute to Bryce and how much of it was having a 6-week-old baby.😳

I can't even let myself think about what if he hadn't been wearing his CPAP mask, which kept his oxygen up. 

Or what if his boss hadn't called? He said he almost didn't. 

Or what if the EMT's hadn't been able to get him to wake up.

Or if this hadn't happened when it did. We had a road trip to Missouri planned just a couple weeks later. What if we had been in a hotel somewhere in the middle of Wyoming?

It's all too scary for me to think about.

The Lord is in the details, we have seen just as many tender mercies in the hard times as we have in the good. We have truly been watched over and cared for, even when we didn't know we needed to be.