Ruby's Big Adventure!

Ruby has been very busy lately! She started preschool (an hour a week), is counting, singing, potty-training, and... was stung by a scorpion! Scorpions here are venomous, and unfortunately, abundant due to the palm trees and rock. What at first seemed to be just a pinched finger, quickly turned into a very strong sting reaction causing her to be hospitalized for two days.

It happened in the morning as we were walking out the door for school. Rubes just started to cry. I thought she had caught her finger in the door. It was a little red and swollen, and I asked her two or three times, "Did you pinch your finger?" She would just scream, "NO!" I thought, "She'll be fine" and loaded the kids in the car. School is two minutes away and she was still crying when I walked the kids to the playground. It went through my mind, "I wonder if she was bit or stung by something?" It wasn't until our way back to the car, that she started to convulse and I knew she had been stung and was having a reaction. She was seizing, foaming at the mouth and vomiting on the way to the hospital and as we pulled into the ER, she was gasping for air!

Ruby spent the day @ the emergency room getting chest X-rays, an MRI, and "metabolizing" out the venom. The doctors just treated her symptomatically with benadryl, steroids, a serious pain killer and breathing treatments. She literally twitched, convulsed, vomited and cried from 8:30 am until about 8:00 pm. By the next morning she was a little weak and raspy, but ran the pediatric halls singing and laughing until they gladly discharged her at 3:00 in the afternoon.

Crazy! Absolutely my worst "mom moment" yet! Rich just kept saying, "Nikki, you have to calm down!" But I honestly thought she was dying before my eyes! I have never in my life been so scared.

It's a good thing were not gamblers! We have had the craziest luck since moving to LV! In the almost two years of living here, all three of our kids have been hospitalized! George for a hernia surgery, Lulu for an emergency appendectomy and Rubes for a scorpion sting! All random! Rich and I are just so grateful for our healthy kids! A nights stay in the hospital's pediatric wing can really put life into perspective!