Febrile Seizures: Not that scary!

Well... it happened early this morning.

I woke up at 2 AM and Elijah was crying in his bed.  I went in and he was all sweaty.  I thought for a moment that he just had a bad dream or something.  I comforted him back to sleep...  Half asleep myself, I stumbled back into my bed and was out.

Only to be woken a 1/2 an hour later by his cries, "Elijah sleep in Daddy's big bed!"  

Okay...  So I picked him up and when I walked by the bathroom I saw in the mirror he was flush red.

I gave him motrin and unzipped his jammies and cooled him down with a wash rag for about 10 minutes.  He was calm... I was calm.  I left him unzipped and threw him in bed with me.

He cried for a pillow and blanket and went back to sleep.

About 3-3:15AM, I hear the loudest shriek in my ear.  It was Elijah...  I flipped over and saw his eyes rolled back in his head, gasping for air and spitting everywhere.

Well...  Been there before.  The 5 seconds of panic from waking like that went to, Elijah is having a seizure.  Really... the only thing you can do after witnessing this 4 times now is comfort him.  He is gonna seize for a minute and you are not going to like what you see in your little boy's eyes.  You have to keep thinking he will come out of it and you hold them so they get through it.

I just held him as he slowly stopped and just made sure he kept breathing which he did.  He completely passed out though and he was running a 101 degree temp in his arm so he was probably much hotter inside.  I took off his jammies and cooled him with wet rags.  I tickled his feet and hands to make sure he moved them and I talked to him and he responded but he was out.  15 minutes later... We were both asleep.  He was hyperventilating before the seizure a bit and I had not really noticed before but now in retrospect.  He woke breathing calmly this morning at 7:30.  I got him dressed and he played like normal and it was just 4 hours later.  

I have been wondering though all day if he had a couple in his own bed which is why he cried out initially.  The doctors keep telling us... This is normal... This is normal... This is normal...

To see him walk out of Starbucks this morning with his cup of apple juice put a tear in my eye.

I love the little guy.

Once, Twice, Three Times a Seizure...

At 12 yesterday... I get a call from daycare... Elijah has a high fever. And we all know what happens when Elijah has a high fever... and we all remember the first time.

So at 12:10... I am at day care and he is having a seizure. Eyes rolled back... stiff... burning up... shaking. (If you want to see one is like go here...)

We're pros at this now but dude... c'mon! Enough already.

The daycare ladies were very concerned and visibly shaken with this as I would expect. I walked in... like it was no biggie... been there, done that... got the t-shirt. I sat until with Elijah for around 5 minutes while we waited for the ambulance, trying to cool him off, and bring him back to awareness. It took a bit but he came back.

The firemen were totally cool. DW showed up at the same time. She's a teacher at a school around the corner and as she was leaving school she saw the fire truck racing by knowing it was for Elijah. The ambulance came and I hopped in with Elijah and we rode in the "big truck" 15 minutes to our hospital. No sirens... Elijah was awake and fine but really scared obviously with all of the stickers and shit they connect up to you to get vital signs.

We got into the emergency room around 1 pm, where we spent the remainder of the day and evening visiting with the sick and hurt people that rushed by. The hospital is under construction so they had to remove like 12 beds into the hallway, so Elijah got the spot in the hall with a lot of traffic.

The shit they did to the poor guy. IV's... Blood draws... the catheter attempt to get urine (YEEEOUCH!!!... I did not watch!!) Hours and hours of observation by the staff went by. We got to visit with lots of nurses and people there for treatments. Some were pretty sad situations to witness, like the 90 year old man with heart trouble or the kid with food poisoning (must have been tomatos!!). Oh and Lawryde... there was this dude there with his elderly mother who looked just like Hunter S Thompson who kept reading and writing shit in his book. He was kind of an asshole too which I thought was cool.

I hate to say it... But I love people watching. I don't stare at sick people, that is wrong. I more or less stare and observe the patient's families walking in and out. When they bring flowers... or when they express laughter or consult with each other. Like outside in the waiting area... Oh my God... there must have been this Middle Eastern patriarch that was sick or something because dude... there were like at least 100 family members there... all really well dressed. You wonder what the sick or injured person is like to have that much of a family come to a hospital.

I am digressing...

Elijah is fine... No idea what caused the temp spike. Febrile seizures are "normal" even though they happen in 2-5% of the kids in the US. Why is 2 to 5 out of 100 considered normal? 2-5 out of 100 is like the number of three point shots made in Shaquille O'neal attempted so far in his career. If you hit 2-5 out of 100 shots on goal with your hockey team, your coach is gonna get pissed at you if you don't pass!!! (Can you image having a hockey rink in your basement?) 2-5 out of 100 is not normal.... But when I use "the Google", other sites on "internets" are telling me it is normal... Like wikipedia... which could be edited by any sick individual who wants to spread disinformation about something. (Snipe... Bring It On)

Anyhow... I have to make a run after lunch back to the doctor with Elijah so we know for sure he is just fine and not just acting like a 2 year old for the hell of it. Daddy... and Mommy for that matter were in pain sitting there holding Elijah all afternoon and evening. Mommy got some of Daddy's pain medicine when she got home. I hurt so bad I fell down last night.

Daycare people are so nice... they called to check on him last night to make sure he was okay. I took him in to get his shoes this morning so they could all see him alive and well.

Time Warp...1988

I spent the weekend with Elijah at my mom and dad's. What a weekend, especially with the seizure and all. Every doctor and everything I read tells me that febrile seizures are not uncommon and that kids grow out of them but dude... freak... me ... out! Holy Shit... I never got to rest like I planned too. I figured, I'd have him down there... he'd run around... Oma and Opa would be playing with him and I could chill for an hour or two on Sunday morning sleeping in or something...

My parents moved me from a big city with hundreds of thousands of people to this desolate little town of 200 people when I was 14. This ironically was the first night I have spent in there has in roughly 9-10 years. Wow!! Things I forgot. I stayed in my old room on the top floor. This was a cool room because it was the highest room in the house and I had my own bathroom. It was really private but I was probably stuck up there for my Baritone Horn/Tuba playing I was doing back in high school and college. I don't know what I sounded like downstairs but I was stuck up there for a purpose with all the practicing. It must have been loud. I wasn't liked so much in the beginning when we first moved there. Music became my refuge... my outlet... I'd blow those horns to make them sound like nothing else before. There is an feeling of peacefulness when I walk into that room... A box of my old hot wheel cars was outside the attack door that the other grand kids have played with over the years. I browsed through them to see if my two favorites where in there: Porsches... a white and a black one. Both RS's I believe...

To this day, my parents house does not have central heat and air. I was reminded of this this weekend. It was chilly yesterday afternoon so the house was cool. My parents are experts at building fires and accumulating firewood for their stove. They had a nice roaring fire going when I got in from the hospital. It was nice...

But I was reminded of how really out of civilization they are. Their internet speed blazes along at a whopping 31.2 kbps on dial up. Satellite TV is a new concept and they seem like they "just got it". My cellphone had faster internet speeds to see this blog, check email, etc. It is just so backwards to me. I can walk down the street with my iPod and pick up an open WiFi here in Sactown to check my email but out there... nothing. The nearest neighbor is a close 300 yards away. Everything is just far away as far as convenience. I left Elijah at 7pm Saturday night to run 15 miles up the road to Starbucks so I could be on the internet at a decent speed to collect all my work stuff. Posting my blog yesterday was a chore, watching my mom's computer, which has a decent amount of speed, try to upload text to blogger.

But spending the night in my old room was odd, especially with Elijah. The bed was in the wrong spot... It used to be over by the other wall and I was reminded why at 5:45 when the sun came up. The room is also bigger than any single room in this house which also shocked me because I felt it was so small growing up. The smells though, were the same. That house never smelled like my first home, there is always a smell there to me that seems to remind me when I am there that I am only visiting. Same smell I smelled 20 years ago at 14.

Then there was the bathroom. This huge bathroom with a toilet in the middle of the room. You feel really isolated and almost naked doing your business there. The cool thing though about this toilet though is when you are taking a leak, you can see the lake. But I think the shocking thing was the mirrors in the room. For the 8 years I lived there until I finally moved out (the 3rd time...LOL) I entered that bathroom every day. Nothing has changed. The fittings, the mirrors and the sinks. But the mirrors... so many times I had looked at myself in these two huge mirrors to shave or brush my teeth or something. What was weird is that you have this memory of yourself and these mirrors and what you looked like in them in the frames and how much different I look now 20 years later. I didn't seem to age so much those first 8 years but the last 12... sort of took it's toll I guess.

I forgot how many clocks made noise in their house. 11 o'clock.. tick tock... I thought all night long as Elijah gasped through his snotty nose while laying on my chest all night upstairs. I didn't sleep much but it was very peaceful for me to hold Elijah like that for me last night. I love my little boy, far beyond my own imagination...

It was nice to have my mom make pancakes this morning. She just bragged the whole time how she doesn't make pancakes or breakfast for my dad anymore but the cupboards are lined with Bisquick. My poor mom though, she always tries to reconcile and/or revise history for the sake of her own sanity. All the same stories I had heard hundreds of times I had heard again this weekend. I kept having to either finish them for her or cut her off because I felt they were stupid and had no point. I guess I am mean for doing that but my mom I think never wanted to live there. My mom and dad are great. Been together going on 43 years now. Pretty much perfect raising us and stuff. But something about being out there always bugs my mom. It always relates to the vastness of the yard which used to be 10 acres until they sold 5 a few years back. It's the lack of everything out there, like trees at first (my dad took care of that) or the lack of the neighborhood comfort you might get living in a city. My mom was always a suburbanite... I think I put my finger on it finally. She is forever lonely out there without actually being alone. Puzzling if you think about it? To my dad though... living there is Mecca. Give him his trees, his garden and his tractor and he'll never stop moving. No matter driving 40 minutes to work each way. He doesn't care. The weather is great most of the year and he's got his stuff to take care of. We took Elijah out on the tractor. Totally unsure but I bet the next time he sees the tractor he'll want a ride. My dad has only 200 hours in 20 years on that tractor, 100 of which are for driving the grand kids around.

I left at 4 o'clock today. Elijah's rough weekend was made easier though even though I was immensely stressed out. Never got to shut the switch off this weekend and I got a rough start in the morning... I gotta make the time to take care of myself...

Check Your Rearview Mirror

So I took Elijah out to the country to spend the night with Oma and Opa. He has this little cold that I talked about yesterday, where he "faked" mom into leaving him home.

This morning I had got him some kiddie Sudafed type liquid medicine at Walmart when we went out for our Saturday morning latte, pastry and car wash. So we gave him a dose this morning and I gave him another at 1 when I got to Oma's. The left to VS for some soy milk.

10 minutes later... as I am heading into town... I hear Elijah coughing... but it was a weird cough... I look in the rear view: Eyes rolled up back into his head, white foam coming out of his mouth... convulsants...

Shit I thought... What a run! Between the roof collapsing from the rat chewed pipe, the storm blowing glass onto the Porsche, the storm window being blown out... the fence... the cat making a repeat trip to the vet for the asthmar, the electrician... now this.

So I called home yelling at the answering machine until DW picked up. Then since I was right there... I ran into the fire dept. driveway. No one there?!?! WTF? Elijah "looked normal" as opposed to the blue color he turned during the last seizure. Still not acknowledging me. I had him up in his car seat. I stood up scratching my head... Fire station... paramedic ambulance right there (like 300 yards away), where are these people? Fuck it... 911

Then suddenly, paramedics came in like a minute, the garage doors open to the fire dept and I had like 15 dudes checking out the Porsche and my son in his seat. Elijah was just hot. I had pulled clothes off and assisted the paramedics strapping oxygen to him. In all...12-14 minutes, Elijah came out of it. Never cried. Just had a look on his face like, "Hey fire trucks!!" They gave him a stuffed dinosaur and I signed my life away. We were 15 miles from the hospital so I chose to drive up myself.

I took him in and waited. He was real hot. They checked his vitals and his temp was 102. Wow... a kid who was throwing rocks at the house, wicked sick minutes later was just too crazy. I had of course was in a minor state of panic but felt stable when I took him into the emergency room. They took care of him. Motrin to bring down the temp. Chest x ray. They gave him Benedryl to decongest him.

Basically... the doctor thought the Sudafed crap accellerated his body temp and that chance again for another febrile seizure. He'll grow out of it eventually but...wow!!!

What's next?

He's sleeping on the couch... peacefully... Poor little guy. Rough day.