Halfway through her birthday party, my daughter flopped down on one of the soft foam blocks scattered around the floor of the indoor playground and refused to get up. At first it seemed like a game—“I’m in the cozy house!”—but then she started staring off into space, looking pale and glazed, feeling warm to the touch. As a parade of little friends came over to check on her, she closed her eyes. By the time we sang “Happy Birthday,” she was fast asleep in my husband’s arms.
We went home and put her straight to bed, around 2pm. She slept on and off through the night. Every time she woke up, we urged her to drink water, Pedialyte, juice, anything. We brought in some crackers. She refused everything except water. The next day, a Monday, I offered more food in the morning—bland cereal, another kind of crackers, pasta—and finally got her to eat by giving her one of her favorite cream-filled cookies. She ate three-quarters of it, her hand shaking, and passed out again.
I was weirded out by how much she was sleeping and how little she was eating, so I called the pediatrician. The nurse on call said this was a normal response to illness, and just to try to keep her hydrated like I’d been doing. As long as she wasn’t vomiting or having diarrhea (she wasn’t) and was peeing at least once every four hours (she was), the nurse reassured me that she’d be fine.
As the day wore on, I noticed an oddly familiar chemical smell on her. At first I couldn’t quite place it, but I thought it was sweat—she’d had a fever, and her bed and pajamas had been soaked. The odor lingered even after I gave her fever meds and changed her clothes, and I figured a bath would wash it away. But after she got out of the tub, I realized the smell was still on her breath. I leaned in for a closer sniff, and that’s when it hit me: it smelled like nail-polish remover.
Acetone—a type of ketone.
She smelled that way because her body had exhausted its stores of glucose and was breaking down fat into ketones for fuel.
She smelled that way because she was starving.
