The Seizures

Please forgive the iphone photos.

It’s true. Lime was in the hospital 2 weeks ago. I know that everyone is curious as to what happened, so let me story tell for you….here it goes…

On a cold Friday afternoon Little Lime was running a slight fever…I didn’t even take an official temperature because she had been cutting teeth. Lime has a history of spiking fevers out of no where when she is teething and so I automatically gave her a dose of ibuprofen. She was acting normal otherwise and so we all went out on a family shopping trip. Lime did well for a while and then toward the end of our trip she became grumpy and started wiggling a bit (probably because it was past her bedtime and we had been shopping for 3 hours!). So we went home and got the girls ready for bed. Before bed she seemed fine and didn’t feel warm so I decided that she didn’t need any more medicine. She went to bed at around 9:30 pm and at 10:15 pm we heard her scream out. We both ran back to the girls room…I reached her first and saw that she was having a seizure and I yelled/screamed at Husband to call 9-1-1. It all happened very quickly. I tried to wait till she was done seizing to pick her up (but I’m sure she hadn’t finished now that I think back) and brought her into the front room to wait for EMS (+acted like a Zombie caring a baby, but you really don’t need to know that).

Yes, I was scared. I was more scared about her having trouble breathing than the seizure though. I knew that it was probably because of the fever and she would be okay….but again I was scared she wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Her breathing became more controlled when EMS arrived and they gave her an oxygen mask. We took her by ambulance to the ER. When we got to the ER she had a temperature of 105.6 and so they gave her Tylenol and let her pass out on top of me.  She had gone from not having a temperature to having a temperature of 105.6 in less than an hour. Because that is how she rolls. In the ER Little Lime was very out of it and extremely tired from her recent exercise. They got some blood from her (which she slept through) and retrieved some urine for labs. We didn’t see a doctor for about a 2 hours. Why? Because she was recovering fine and everyone knew what had happened. She had had a Febrile Seizure.

I know that any kind of seizure probably sounds scary…and IT IS scary to watch your child have a seizure, but luckily Febrile Seizures are harmless and fairly common. You can read more about them HERE. They started her labs and sent us home with instructions that we should bring her back only if she has another seizure lasting longer than 10 minutes. The next day while I was at work in the ER, she had another seizure. We started giving her Tylenol and ipheprohen (with direction from the doctor I was working with) to try and control her fever. For 24 hours we didn’t get must rest and basically hovered over her waiting for her temperature to spike every 4 hours. The next day the ER called us back and told us that her lab results were positive and that she should probably get a shot from her doctor of antibiotics. When the charge nurse heard that we were having trouble controlling her temperature, he told us to come back in to get the shot and have another evaluation. Luckily, the doctor that saw us was my friend that I had talked to about Lily and so she gave us great care. After consulting with the pediatric team she decided to be cautious and admit her for treatment with IV antibiotics.

Little Lime’s fever continued to spike in the hospital but she did improve. She was sad because it took an hour to get the IV trying to avoid using her thumb sucking harm. But eventually it was the only option left. Not having her thumb to cope with was probably the hardest part for her. She hated being tied to the IV and so we were constantly chasing after her with the IV pole. We were there two days and then released with oral antibiotics. It was kind of by accident too…Her IV started leaking and no one wanted to try and put it back in! She was a very happy baby when she was able to run around without it attached to her arm.

Results were that she had a bad Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) and possibly a kidney infection. We are having some testing done this week (due to family history) to determine whether she has something we need to fix anatomically to prevent infection in the future or if it was a random incident. The seizures may come again in the future with Little Lime just because spiking fevers is how her body works. They come out of no where….so we will just have to be quicker to control them than we are with Raine.

Thank you all for your support and kind words when we were dealing with this. We had great care in the hospital and I’m proud to work at an organization that is so caring. Also, special thanks to my mother for flying up to help entertain Raine!

So no worries everyone! Lime is resilient and has been back to her goofy self in no time.

Our little Virgin Mary (she really likes playing with something on her head…weird but true).

“Someone get me out of here!!! I’ve got a story to report.”

Could not leave out a diaper bum shot.

Baby Buddha