First trip to ER

I guess I have to start by saying Seth is just fine, he's sleeping peacefully in his own crib at home tonight. But we had quite the scary day and I'm so thankful that it's over, and it went as well as it could.

Yesterday afternoon Seth had a bit of a runny nose and a cough, and didn't take much of a nap at day care so I put him to bed early. He was clearly not feeling good but went down okay and slept fairly well until 2am. When I went in and picked him up he was burning up, so we went downstairs and took his temperature. It was 101.4 I think so we had some juice and ibuprofen and watched tv for awhile until he seemed a little better and went back to bed. He woke up a couple more times but went back to sleep each time until 8am. He still had a fever so I gave him some more ibuprofen and after an hour or so it went down a little but he was still acting really whiney and just wanted to cuddle which is so unlike him. We decided to take him to Urgent Care just to make sure he didn't have an ear infection or something. Well in the car on the way there he was just really shivering and moaning and breathing heavy so I was already glad we were heading to the doctor! Then Eric looked back at him and told me "look back at your son." I looked back and his mouth was twitching to the side almost rhythmically at first, and then he kind of just went limp and his eyes were rolling back and his teeth were clenched and he was clearly having trouble breathing and I was FREAKING OUT, I had no idea what was going on!! We quickly re-routed to the emergency room and thankfully we were almost there by then anyway. I have never unbuckled that car seat so fast and we booked it into the ER and they whisked us right back and went to work. By then Seth was just kind of passed out and breathing really heavy and they were just giving him some oxygen and grilling us about what happened, that part was all a bit of a blur. They did also strip him down and take his temperature which was by then 104.3!

In the end, they said he had a febrile seizure. In hindsight it's not too surprising, Eric had them when he was a baby I guess and that tends to boost the risk of our children being more prone to them. I told Eric I've never seen a seizure in real life and at least in Seth's case, it looked nothing like what you are used to seeing on TV and in Movies! I thought he was dying! Anyway, they listened to his lungs and they were pretty noisy so they took a chest x-ray expecting that he would have pneumonia and that he would have to be admitted, but ultimately that wasn't it. His white cells were elevated so they gave him a round of antibiotics but at this point we still aren't exactly sure what made his temperature spike like that. They did a blood culture so maybe eventually we will know if there was bacteria, and what it was. We will be following up with Seth's doctor on Monday so maybe we'll find out more then.

What else...? Oh, they made him breathe some albuterol, which he was really not a fan of. He got an IV and a big pint of saline run through him. That was really annoying because the IV was in the crook of his elbow and any time he would bend his arm the machine would shut off and start beeping. We didn't want to have to strap his arm on a board so we were trying to keep him calm and keep his arm straight. We were hanging out for about 3 hours or so waiting for his temperature to go down, and his heart rate (it was up around 180-190 for a long time) before they would discharge him. He relaxed mostly, alternating between my lap and Eric's, and dozed off for a really short cat nap at one point. Finally he got down to 98.9 and 154 bpm and was getting super restless so we got up and walked around the hall with him. He was really alert and checking everything out so the doctor said we could go ahead and get out of there. We got him dressed while we waited for our discharge instructions and he was literally running up and down the hall laughing and I heard one of the nurses ask if that was the same kid that came in earlier!

So, we came home with instructions to bring him right back if things got worse again. But other than being really fussy all afternoon, which I'm sure was just because he was exhausted, he seems almost back to his normal self. I tell you what, I'd rather have him home throwing tantrums and dropping food on the floor than have to see him all listless and quiet and small in the middle of that hospital bed. I don't think I have ever been so scared in my life as I was in the car when he was having that seizure. But knowledge is power and hopefully now that I know what it looks like it will not be as scary if it ever happens again. And ironically, the doctor said that the seizure itself is not really a concern at all. Whew!

I had such big plans for this day. Just goes to show, they often go awry.