The ‘What to do if your kid doesn’t wake up’ training session

Oh. My. God.
One day you’re told your child has a serious illness and the next you’re being told what to do if they don’t wake up. It’s been a hard 24 hours.

30th December 2010, just after lunch:

Amy was eager to get home as soon as possible, to get things back to normal. We weren’t so sure. In some ways it was no different to when Emilia was born, we wanted to get out of the hospital as soon as possible; we wanted to stay there for our own security.

One of Winchester’s superb DSNs said to Jane and I that she needed to show us how to do something and that perhaps we should do it away from Amy. It was call a good call, whereas my suggestion of the ‘away from Amy’ place being the vacant bed next to her with the curtain around it, probably wasn’t.

Sat on that bed, with the (not-quite-sound-isolating) curtain around us, the DSN explained about severe hypos and how to use the Glucogel.

And then she did it. She got out the Glucagon kit, Jane’s worst nightmare.

The DSN realised that this wasn’t going to be our favourite subject and dealt with us very well, calmly and professionally but we had no chance of playing truant from this lesson. We understood the need to understand.

We each had a kit, with its bright orange case, its needle and its vial. We followed the instructions and all went well. We felt confident and did it again.

I hope I never do it again.

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