The Best Laid Plans

As you know if you read yesterday's post, today was our national adoption day picnic and we were excited about it. The kiddos were up bright and early and things were wonderful. I headed into the shower, Jacob was loading the car and the girls were playing upstairs. As I was drying my hair I could hear Lily saying to Rosie, "here is a drawer for you to close", I figured that since Rosie loves to close drawers Lily was opening them and Rose was shutting them, no biggy.
All of a sudden I heard a blood curdling scream, I dropped my hair dryer and shot into my bedroom to find that somehow they had knocked over/pulled over Jacobs huge chest of drawers and it was resting on them. I screamed, which is really unusual cos I am the voice of calm and reason in bad situations and Jacob came running. I had righted the chest and grabbed Rosie who was bleeding from a cut on her face and yanked Lily out of the way. Jacob ran to Lily and I tended to Rose.

I calmed down instantly and checked out both of the girlies thoroughly. They both got smacked in the face by the drawers and were sporting small cuts and bruises but that was it! It is what it is and yes it could have been much worse but it wasn't. Enough said.

We headed off to the picnic, better late than never and as soon as we arrived I asked Hollis if our social worker was coming. She said. yes. so I said, Oh Cwap! Our SW is fabulous and of course she noticed the cuts and Lily's eye which is now black and we joked about how I really shouldn't beat my kids.

The picnic was going really well and loads of people that we haven't seen for ages were there. We all talked and the kids played and Rosie was running around like one of the crowd. I met a really nice lady called Ana and we chatted for ages cos she wants to move to the Special Needs program and wanted information on that. (the red thread comes into play here)

Lily was having such a lovely time playing ball, playing on the playground, blowing bubbles, whirling her hula hoop and basically just enjoying her friends. At one point Jacob was watching Lily and I was watching Rose when Lily comes up to me wearing her dad's shirt. She told me she had fallen over in a red ant nest and daddy was making sure there weren't any more ants on her clothes. I asked if she was OK and she said she was but very itchy. Not five minutes later Jacob is carrying her over to me and she is crying and scratching like mad. I started to talk to her but she was really upset so we went to the car so I could take off all her clothes and have a look myself. Once I sat her down I realised that she was covered in hives. I asked a friends hubby to look at her as he is a paramedic and he told Jacob to go and get some Benedryll quickly. Jacob took off with Rosie and I stayed with Lily and watched as her little body got bigger and bigger and her eyes started to swell shut. I kept wiping her down with really cold water on paper towels and under my breathe I was begging Jacob to drive faster. She could still breathe properly and that wasn't changing so I hoped she would be fine. Another Mum came over and told me to dial 911 but I didn't. Jacob appeared with the goods and that is where the red thread with Ana comes into play. It turns out she is a nurse practitioner so I called her over to the car and asked her to look at Lily. Ana said it was pretty bad and to give her a massive dose of Benedryll. We also used topical benedryll and within about 10 minutes things started to calm down. Lily was instantly wiped out by the meds but she wanted to stay. Ana said that she must stay on the antihistamine all night cos the swelling could come back and could get much worse.

Obviously we had to leave but Lily really didn't want to. After about 10 minutes she got really sick so that was it. We headed home. I rang our Dr. from the car and she said to take her to an urgent care clinic because of the facial swelling. I dropped Jacob off at home and Lily and I went straight out. As we were waiting to see the Dr. her hives back back with a vengeance and her face started to swell again, needless to say we were seen immediately. My little trooper is on a very heavy dose of steroids for the next 4 days, she received even more antihistamines from the Dr. and is now in a drug induced sleep and feeling much better. She now has to carry an Epi-pen everywhere she goes and we have been warned that next time it happens the reaction will most likely be much faster and much worse.

Since she has a really nasty reaction to mosquito bites we have always thought that she might be allergic to ants and bees and now we know for sure. The good side of this, cos you know me, Miss Silver Lining, is that this happened when we were around medical professionals so we were able to deal with it very quickly. If something like this has to happen make sure you have good people around.LOL

All Lily has had to say about it is, "wow, I am just like Grandpa. If I keep the bees away from him he can keep the ants away from me."

This has been one of the longest days I can remember. Jacob just made me laugh because he said, "this day just had the Emergency department written all over it right from the second we woke up". And so in the scheme of things the dresser falling on the girls was not a big deal but those tiny weeny little ants, damn they were huge! Oh and the dresser....securely anchored to the wall, now!

I think I have photos somewhere but I need to hit the chocolate so I will post them later.