Emergency perceptions

[jojosmommy]

In additon to home daycare, I teach a class for the school district in my area and a child in my class had a seizure in class the other day (1st time ever for the child, no history of seizure disorder). I quickly removed the student from the room and called EMS. Child was fine, luckily my son has seizures so I knew what to look for and was pretty calm through the whole thing. None of the other kids even knew the child was gone- we said she had to go potty and they never asked again. However, today one of my babies passed out asleep in the stroller and I immediately went into "seizure mode". I absolutely could not wake this kid up. Seems the park trip really wore her out. She was absolutely fine but my mind immediately went to emergency when I knew better.

My question to you is what is the worst emergency you have dealt with in care and were your perceptions of typical things then altered because of your experience?

[Blackcat31]

I have had:
Major things

Had a child (age 7 months) stop breathing for a brief moment and then have severe difficulty breathing: I called an ambulance, after I performed CPR, called mom. I can't remember the exact order of what I did first since I seemed to be on auto-pilot but the child had RSV and after a brief hospital stay was fine. (Whew!)

Child broke his right index finger and the bone was actually sticking out the fleshy side of his finger...ewww! It was so gross. I had an assistant and luckily it was the end of the day and I only had 2 kids left so I drove kid to the ER. He had to be brought to a hospital 85 miles away because ours didn't have a pediatric surgeon! He had emergency surgery and had 2 pins put in his finger as well as 6 months of physical therapy afterwards. (thankfully it was my own child. He was 6.)

Had a 5 year old boy fall off the Little Tikes castle and break his right arm on the day before he started Kindergarten. His mom lived two blocks away so we called her and she brought him to ER. He wasn't crying or anything. Just kept saying his arm was hot.

Had a 4 year old boy jump off a swing and bite his tongue almost in half!! We iced it and called mom who only worked down the block. There seemed to be gallons of blood! She rushed him into the ER and the Dr. there just gave him an ice pack and said it will heal quickly! and it sure did! by the following week, you could hardly tell it had even happened.

Minor things:
I also had a kid once get the small half of a plastic easter egg stuck in his mouth so the inside was facing out and he freaked so it made it hard to get it out. He wasn't choking and could breath just fine but it was probably super scary! We have since ditched any plastic easter eggs! LOL!!

I had a kid (2yrs) get his arm stuck in the silo of an old Fisher Price barn because he was reaching where he shouldn't have been. I had to break the barn to get his hand out. He thought the whole thing was funny. I did not.

Had a 9 year old girl who got her tongue stuck to the chain link fence in the sub zero temps. But in her case, she did it every year (on purpose)! She was one of those thrill seeker kids...kwim? This one year she got it pretty bad though and I think some of her flesh is still stuck there....I always just told her it served her right!!