Mommy Fail

Ariana and I spent the better part of Monday in the ER at Banner Desert again. Only this time, Ari wasn't sick (neither was I).

Monday morning, I went to give Ari her regular shot of Lovonox (basically Heparin; blood thinner). I prepped the syringe and cleared the bubble. The medicine comes in prefilled syringes with about .65 mL of Lovonox. Ariana's dose is .14 mL twice a day. So every time I give her a dose, I have to do a waste of about .51 mL before I give her the shot. Normally, I never put the syringe down on the counter without first doing the waste. This time, I got distracted somewhere between prepping the syringe and doing the waste. I'm sure you can tell where this is going. When I got back to it, I picked up the syringe and, out of habit, gave Ari her dose. I always give her shot really quick (and, let's face it, 0.14 mL is not a lot of volume), and as soon as I pressed that stopper, I knew I had really messed up. Ari ended up getting about .45 mL of Lovonox that morning -- almost four times her prescribed dose. My heart sank. Nothing hurts worse than when your baby is worse off on account of you. Those are the mistakes you never forget.

I called the doctor, and he of course told us to go to the ER. He called ahead to make sure we wouldn't have a wait. At the hospital, Ari had some blood drawn to test her levels, and she was given .75 mg of Protamine Sulfate (antidote to heparin) per every 1 mL of extra Lovonox she got (adjusted from 1 to 1 ratio for the time lapse). While it's never a good thing to be in the ER, this hospital experience has been our best ever. Our nurses (John, and charge nurse Rosa) were amazing. Everyone just doted over Ari and treated her like the little angel that she is. Our nurse got Ari's IV in on the first try, and it was perfect. Ari hardly fussed at all throughout the whole experience, and she loved her nurse so much that she didn't even mind his rubber gloves. "Dr. Mark" was also very good to us, and took all of my questions into consideration. Sorry to blab on and on, but I feel that with as much information as I share when things don't go so well, I need to give credit when it's due and things go just swell.
We were discharged at around 5:30 PM, and everything has been fine since. Ari has been behaving normally, and we were told that we could resume her anticoagulants as of last night. On a side note, Ari has been on Coumadin (oral blood thinner) since the get go, starting on a dose of 1.5 mg/day (according to her weight). Now, she's on 3.5 mg/day and, would you believe, she isn't even within the therapeutic range yet? Her INR should be between 2 and 3 and it's still 1.3 (as of last check in the ER). That's the same INR as when her dose was 1.5 mg. So wierd.