Emerson Grant’s Story – The road to recovery at St Peter’s Hospital,
So what a week it’s been!!! From meeting #paralympians, #motorracing stars past, present and future to #emersongrant2014 being rushed to hospital to Emergency resuscitation!!! As most of you know we live in constant anxiety having a child with #spinalcordinjury #SCI, we are still learning and everyday we are presented with a new obstacle to overcome that we take on with a smile.
Sadly this week we dealt with something no parent ever wants to deal with.
At 04.10 on Tuesday morning Emerson woke and felt very clammy,sweaty, looked very pale and felt cold to touch. This is a way of Emerson’s body telling us something isn’t right. We quickly took his temperature which had a very low reading. Within minutes Emerson’s body went into shock and he had a of stroke/seizure. He stopped breathing and was unresponsive, his body was jerking and he was clutching his chest. His pupils were largely diluted but he was just staring with no movement. For over an hour we watched the ambulance emergency service work out what was wrong. They checked his blood sugar levels which were extremely low 1.8. The average persons levels should read between 2.5 and 7.5. We felt helpless and watched the ambulance men help him and treat whatever it was that put his body into shock.
We arrived at the A&E and the resuscitation team were waiting for us. We watched for over 5 hours as they worked tirelessly to get him stable and thankfully we sit here today with a few smiles back.
It is still unknown what caused Emerson to react like this, he had shown no illness prior and went to bed as normal after being fed, and with fluids. We have always maintained his bladder and bowel management and that was all ok.
Many tests have been completed and we await some results and continue to be in hospital for a few more tests.
We count our blessing today that Emerson is sitting up and eating and becoming his usual self, our cheeky little warrior not really understanding the trauma his tiny little body has been through over the last 5 days.
We cannot even begin to explain the pain we felt seeing his body go into seizure, watching the paramedic cut his clothes off, sitting in resuscitation as they desperately try to get the cannula in his hand and as he’s wrapped in a snuggle bag to get his temperature up.
We explain this all in such detail for many reasons but mainly because we wonder if anyone else has suffered similar and can offer us and the doctors any advise on what it was that sent his body into a seizure and also we want to raise awareness make sure that this is documented so that others that might find themselves in a similar situation will know what to do or at least know that they are not alone and it’s happened to someone else.
We are not sure if this was related to #autonomicdysreflexia as we and the doctors can’t understand why his blood sugar levels went down so low.
We believe that a low blood sugar level has never been researched or documented with Autonomic Dysreflexia.
We thank all the emergency services for bring Emerson back and their continued support in trying to find an answer and we thank everyone of our Facebook friends and family for there continued support, love and prayers.
In this new life we find our selfs in, everyday is tough and a challenge but thankfully we are able to plough on positively as we embrace this new journey trying to make the best of everything we do and to never give up hope.
We are so fearful should this happen again Emerson may not survive or it will cause very serious brain issues.
We prayer that we can get to the bottom of this quickly so we can manage this in our everyday routines and prevent it from ever happening again.
Today is good – but tomorrow is unknown, but we will face the challenges.
#lifeafterspinalcordinjury #nevergiveup #spinalcordinjuryhope #spinalcordawareness #spinalcordresearch
Emerson Grant story 