Why I have been MIA

Firstly i wanted to apologise for my absence not only from my blog but facebook and twitter as well. This is a post i was unsure about writing but decided in the end to throw caution in the wind and let it all out.

As most of you are aware I am a mum, and juggling work and parenthood can be difficult at the best of times, especially when a child is sick. Our 7 year old daughter has been suffering with a heart condition and it has worsened over the last 12 months.

Prior to Christmas our family faced every parents worst nightmare. Our 8 year old daughter woke me to tell me our 7 year old daughter was face down in bed making a funny noise.
I ran to her room to find her face down. I turned her over and it was the scariest thing I have ever seen, her lips were blue, her eyes were rolled back in her head she was totally unresponsive and not breathing.

I tried to wake her, I couldn't feel a pulse. My husband had woken early and was working in the shed, our 8 year old got my phone, called 000 and asked for an ambulance before putting it on speaker for me. While i spoke to the operator miss 8 went and got my husband.

We gave her CPR with the help of the 000 staff, we didn't know if we were helping or not, she was not responding in any way.
It took the ambulance 25 mins to arrive, we performed CPR until then. The ambo's hooked her up to monitors and told us she had a heart beat. In the mean time the care flight chopper arrived with a doctor. they stabilised her before they airlifted us to the mater where her heart specialist is.

We arrived at the emergency department where the doctors tried to figure out what had happened. She was breathing but still unresponsive,
After initially thinking it was her heart condition, the doctors started to think it was possibly something else as she was so unresponsive, they asked if she could have taken any pain medications or opiate's, but i said no as no one in our house takes pain medication or uses drugs.

The doctors decided to try giving her a medication to counter act the effects of drugs just in case, and it worked. Almost instantly she regained conciseness, i was so relived to see her awake, but also so confused as to how it was possible.

After a lot of detective work from my husband he found some medication on the top of our medicine cabinet, that was not normally there. It was a foil back with two tablets one still in the pack. We later found out it was my mother in laws morhpine that she had accidentally dropped out of her handbag on a prior visit.

The medication the hospital gave her work well and after one night in ICU and 3 more on the ward, miss 7 was back to her usual self and ready to go home.

Her heart condition causes her chest discomfort and she had woken during the night, trying to make the pain go away she helped herself to the first thing she found.
She has come away from this unscathed, I don't know about my husband or myself. I have been having a lot of trouble sleeping and am checking on miss 7 every hour. Both my husband and I am also suffering from nightmares.

I was concerned about putting the details on here but I wanted to show that no matter how good a parent you are, or how vigilant you are sometimes shit happens.

I urge all parents to check your home for medications and poisons, and double child proof it all ( ours was on the top shelf of the pantry well out of reach)

And learn CPR you never know when you may need it.

So i have taken some time off to spend with the kids and to try and come to grips with the ordeal, I don't think I will ever get the sight of her like that out of my head, but it has taught me to cherish every moment i have with them.

I am not giving up Blogging and am ready to get stuck in to 2012 with a new perspective and appreciation of all life's blessings.  xx D