Scared to death.

First, all is well and Jaia is OK.  Now the story. 

Life as I knew it was suddenly and horribly turned on its head last night. 

After a long day of visiting with Dan’s dad and brother and a delicious dinner out, we bathed our deliriously happy bean and put her to bed. Duncan and I worked on trying to capture the eclipse, we played around with the photos and watched some tv and then we all headed to bed around 11:30 pm. All was normal. And ok.

An hour later, Jaia woke up and was crying in her room. Rather than risk waking everybody up, Dan got up and brought her into our room after he tried but couldn’t get her to fall back to sleep in her crib. He put her beside me and I immediately noticed that she was hot. Boiling hot. But I didn’t think too much of it, because she tends to be a really warm sleeper.

Within a few minutes, I felt her shake. I assumed that she had had a dream that had frightened her, but a few minutes after that her eyes rolled back and she began to convulse. I thought I was imagining it at first, but then Dan jumped up, threw on the light and grabbed the phone to call 911. There was no doubt that she was having a seizure. We tried to talk to her to bring her back to us for what seemed like 30 minutes but it was probably more like 2 (my description makes me sound like I was calm – I wasn’t). Once the seizure ended, she fell limp in my arms and was very unresponsive while we waited for the ambulance to arrive (again, it felt like forever until they pulled up). I’ve never been more scared in my life.

I will spare the looooooooooooooong story and gory details of our time spent at the hospital last night, because all that matters is that we ended up with a fairly happy ending. We finally saw the doctor at around 6:00 am and after a brief exam, she determined that Jaia had had a febrile seizure.

These seizures are not uncommon and the one she experienced was the direct result of an extremely high fever (we are still shocked, as I mentioned, Jaia showed no sign of sickness at all and was all smiles before bed). They do not leave any residual effects (no real chance of brain damage) and do not increase the risk of developing epilepsy. It does mean, though, that she has a 30% chance of seizing again, so we have to be vigilent about watching for the signs of fever, the same signs that we obviously completely missed last night. Ok.

So. Jaia is fine. She’s been sleeping most of the day, a well-deserved catch up, and I assume she’ll sleep well tonight as well. She was back to her old self about an hour into this whole ordeal and has remained happy, hungry and so totally Jaia ever since.

I do have to say a few words about CHEO. Hospitals are slow, no matter who they are treating, and the idea that a hospital that treats only children exists and saw a steady stream of little ones all night long is heartbreaking. And when you are the worried mama (or daddy), 5 hours of waiting seems more like 312, but I completely understood and accepted that it wouldn’t be a quick in and out.  These things take time.

After our experience last night, I feel that the people who work there deserve medals of honour. I can’t imagine a more horrible or sad place to work. At every turn there was another sick or crying child with their blank-faced, panicked parent in tow and the nurses and doctors were wonderful. I hope to not ever see them again, but quite frankly, they made our long, long, long time in the emergency room, in the middle of the night, completely…bearable.