I saw this sitting on Shiela's end table last night when we were getting ready for bed. ugh...



Ok.. so I have a few more minutes and wanted to fill in some of the blanks from Ben's seizure over the weekend. I'll start with the basics.

On Sunday, Ben woke up with a fever. This wasn't entirely unexpected as he had been an absolute BEAR on Saturday, which typically means that he's not feeling well. We started him on the Motrin/Tylenol cycle (Motrin every 6 hrs with Tylenol every 6 hrs spaced 3 hrs apart.. so the Tylenol still has some kick when the Motrin starts to wear off). We stayed in for most of the day and did "the kid is sick" stuff like eating pedialyte pops and watching Thomas the Tank Engine on "repeat ad nauseum mode."

Around 3:30ish, we decided that we had to get out of the house. Ben had his last dose of Motrin at 2:30 and Shiela and I hadn't eaten yet. We opted for a drive and went up to Burlington where we stopped at Wendy's so I could get a frosty and Ben got some nuggets and then we headed over to Taco Bell so Shiela could get a burrito fix. On our way home, we both noticed that Ben's cheeks were starting to turn pink.

The closer we got to home the sicker he started looking. When we took him out of the car seat, he clearly had a temp again. This wasn't too uncommon as he had been running a temp of about 101 even with the Motrin/Tylenol.

When we got upstairs a minute or two later, he was burning up. I've never felt skin that hot. I took off to the bathroom to run the water in the tub and Shiela stripped him and met me in there. We took his temp by ear on the way into the tub.. it was 104. While we had the water warm.. his temp was so high that it hurt his skin and his whole body was instantly covered with chill bumps. It was heart breaking because he got so excited to see the tub and then was crushed because he felt so badly. We tried to make the tub thing work for at least a few minutes to try to get his temp down. We finally decided that it was too much for him and Shiela took him in a dry towel and walked him into his bedroom. By the time I got half dressed and into his room with them, we both knew it was coming.

We just looked at each other and one or the both of us said "he's going..". Shiela got him down on the twin bed in his room and rolled him to his side. She yelled "get the time".. I was already on my way into our bedroom to check the clock. Note to self: get clock for baby's room.

I should remember what time this all happened.. because I was timing the seizure. I couldn't tell you for the life of me when this happened between 4:30 and 5:30 pm. The next time I had a time check, it was 6pm and we were in the hospital.

For five minutes, we hovered over the baby as his entire body seized. While we've experienced this before, it is just as terrifying when you know what is going on and have directions for what to do. I took turns hovering over him and running around the house like a chicken with its head chopped off. I finished getting dressed, got my wallet, got both of our sets of keys, got Shiela's wallet, got his seizure kit, called 911...

As a side note. There are so many people that do not have a land line anymore. The trend is to use your cell phone as your primary and only phone.. it makes sense.. you spend a fortune on your service and coverage is typically fine around here (unless you have AT&T.. but that's a different rant).. why not ditch the ol' phone company's archaic system? We did for a while. At some point, we went back to having a land line and our cell phones.. redundant, but Shiela couldn't get me to stop losing my cell phone and/or keep it charged.

The one kicker in all of this is 911 service. We take it for granted. When you have a cell phone, you can call 911.. but you get connected to a service that then connects you to your local district which then will send out a unit for whatever you need. This is fine and dandy.. but it takes being transfered and talking a lot.. at least a lot during a time when you don't remember your middle name. I use 911 from my cell phone to report traffic accidents and even used it about a week ago to report that a mentally challenged young fellow decided he wanted to get into our car.. another long story.

When you're in SuperMoms adrenaline-rush mode.. this is too much. I picked up my land line (which we get through our cable provider.. so we did ditch the phone company in the grand scheme of things) and said "my son is having a seizure" and the operator said "ok ma'am, a unit is on their way". simple as that. I stayed on the line to answer one question.. "how old is he".. i responded "19 months".. the operator responded "thank you.. would you like to stay on the line until they arrive?" I said "no thanks.." and that was that. I didn't need to know my street address, town name.. i didn't even have to give her my name.. they had the info they needed.. the security of having this service available is worth the $26.95 per month phone charge.

Ok.. now back to my story..

I called 911 at about 3 minutes. By 4 minutes we were breaking into his seizure kit. By 5 minutes Shiela was administering the Diastat and counting like they told us to in the video tutorial. This was the first time we had needed to use it. The seizure broke within seconds. He looked up at us with a confused expression and opened and stretched his mouth.. I'm sure it hurt.. at a minimum he had been grinding his teeth harder than I thought was physically possible.. but we also believe he chomped the inside of his cheek a bit.. not enough to bleed, thankfully.

After the seizure he was completely limp and very lethargic. He drifted in and out of sleep. I ran downstairs as the police and fire units arrived. Just after them was the ambulance. Between those three vehicles, the street was totally blocked up with flashing lights.

The whole crew followed me upstairs to ben's room where Shiela was waiting with him. Since the seizure had broken, they just needed to establish his vitals and get him moving to the hospital.

I rode with him in the ambulance again. They strapped me down to the gurney and then wrapped the two of us together and off we went. They got him rigged with oxygen just in case another seizure started. They also checked his blood sugar. Then it was just the ride.. from Arlington (suburn northwest of Boston) downtown to the Children's Hospital. We flew through traffic which parted like butter on a hot day (um.. maybe I've been typing too long.. I can't believe I just typed that)..

At the hospital.. it was pretty routine. At least when you've done this twice before. I held him while he cried and I tried to speak over his cries to get all of the important information to the nurses and doctors and registration staff while they all checked him over. Shiela arrived shortly after we did and was there to play tag-team-mommies. Ben would want one of us.. then the other... then the other... repeat this for several hours.

The biggest challenge of our ER visit was the fact that they needed to rule out whether he had an ear infection or not. This is a bit more challenging when both ears were impacted with wax. They ended up having to go in and clean out his ears, which was painful and confusing for him and just heart wrenching for us. Once they had ruled out infections, we were left to wait... wait for it to be time for more Motrin.. wait for the neurologist.. watch the olympics... play with the pink plastic puke buckets.. rinse the binky for the 1203rd time after it gets chucked across the room. Occasionally.. he would sleep.





We were released from the hospital late Sunday night/early Monday morning. We drove home.. Ben was VERY happy to be out of the hospital.. he laughed when he saw our car in the parking garage and said "yeah..."

[insert restless night of sleep]

Monday was pretty terrible all around. Ben was hurting, confused, mad and sick. This isn't a great mix for a toddler.. or his moms. He spent most of the day screaming and thrashing. There were a few brief moments of rest.. very brief.

By mid-afternoon.. we were going nuts. His fever had broken, but he was still just so distressed and our anxiety levels were through the roof after feeling so helpless during the seizure and then to feel helpless in finding a way to soothe him the next day. We took off in the car again. It was Shiela's idea.. I was skeptical.. but I couldn't stay in the house. We wound up in Concord's historic district and had "lunch" at a cute little place where one of the employees gave Ben some wikkistix to play with. It was the first time in 24 hours that he was calm AND awake. We're going to buy this wonderful product in bulk.

Ben got down and walked around a bit on the greens in Concord before we decided to start on home. We finished out the evening with some free form doodling. I picked up some markers from Walgreens and threw the rulebook aside.. He had a little bit of marker that made the paper.. most wound up on his hands, shirt, mouth and the table.



We ended the day on a more positive note.. although sleeping was difficult Monday into Tuesday. For reference.. the pic below shows Ben a day after the seizure.. those are TIRED EYES.



This picture was taken Saturday afternoon.. a day BEFORE the seizure. Note the eyes. (also note the pink babydoll stroller.. that's another story!)