Heaps and Heaps!

(Molly) Well...In an effort to prove that I do work a little, I'll share another work story. I feel a little bad making posts without pictures (how boring to read!), so I'm sharing a glimpse of my "commute." This shot is from our back gate...I walk up and over the hill, through a small parking lot ("Car Park," as the Kiwis say) and I'm in the building. The cool thing is, our back yard is so green and shrubby and tree-covered, and sunk down a little, you actually can't see the hospital until you are outside the fence...Best of both worlds!!

I recently took care of a 6 year old girl with severe dehydration because of vomiting and diarrhea (sorry if this grosses anyone out...) -- She was pretty ill and had lost 3 kg (6.6 Lbs) in a week, which is a lot for a skinny 6 year old - it would be a lot for me! I knew she needed an IV, her mom knew she needed an IV, the nurse knew she needed an IV, we all knew. But this isn't an 18 month old where you just have to get it done. Six-year-olds have to be reasoned with. So, in an effort to make her feel we'd tried everything possible, we made a deal to try ORT (Short for Oral Rehydration Therapy, where you sneak 1 tsp of fluid by mouth every 10 minutes in order to trick the stomach into not noticing that you are drinking. A kid's instinct when they are dehydrated is to guzzle any water you put in front of them, which generally just leads to more puking...ORT can at times get a good amount of fluid into a mild-moderately dehydrated kid without their stomach noticing.)

-- I knew she was too dehydrated for it to work, but she wanted to try -- like I said, a 6-year-old has to be reasoned with a little, so I agreed to let her try for 30 minutes and if she puked...IV goes in. (Note to US ED doctor readers...it wasn't busy, I had time to work with her...if it had been busy, the little ORT game would not have flown and the IV would have been in...But then I would have missed out on this hilarious little tyrade!) There's a funny phenomenon when smaller kids/toddlers do ORT -- They get MAD! They are so thirsty and dehydrated, they cry and fuss and scream, until you give them 1 teaspoon of pedialyte, then they are happy for 1 second, and then they scream until you give them more...10 minutes later. They're thirsty! They just can't tell you...In this case, she could verbalize. I wandered back in approximately 40 minutes later and this adorable curly-haired Kiwi is crying, saying (NOTE, imperative that you imagine outrageously cute Kiwi kid accent with pathetic pouty lip for this part to get the full effect...) "Mummy won't give me any more water!" ("Wah-teh"...no R...so cute!) Me (boring North American accent): "But sweetie, you can't have any more than that, you'll get sick again..." Adorable Kiwi Kid: "But I do want water! I do! I want heaps and heaps!" Only in NZ do people say things like "heaps and heaps." It was terribly cute, and I had to try so hard to not laugh at her...and then lucky me got to leave while the nurses did the dirty work! Admitted, hydrated, and better. Heaps and heaps!