Tuesday

Yesterday began normally…I heard Maddy start to wake up, so I made her breakfast and then went and got her from her room.  She felt really warm, so I took her temperature and found out that she had a fever. No big deal, she’s 2 and gets little fevers all the time. So I thought nothing of it and planned a quiet morning at home where she would be able to chill out on the couch and not do much.

A couple hours later, I left the room for a minute while she was watching tv, and came back to see her shaking and convulsing, in the middle of a seizure. I grabbed her up off the couch (which wasn’t the right thing to do, but it just would have felt wrong not to hold her) somehow located the phone and called 911, although I don’t remember doing that at all. Just as the 911 operator was answering, Maddy’s lips started turning blue, which was the single worst moment of my life so far. Up until that point I was running on sheer adrenaline and hardly processing what was happening, but seeing my girl’s lips go blue as she was seizing shook me to the core. For just that second I honestly thought she was going to die.

A second later she started coming out of the seizure, stopped shaking, opened her eyes for a minute and whimpered and then passed out on my shoulder. The ambulance got there within just a couple minutes (impressive since I live a little ways outside the city), and I somehow managed to get dressed (I had been wearing pajamas) and grab my purse, keys, and a fully stocked diaper bag. I have no memory of doing any of that, but I guess it’s good to know that when running on adrenaline I’m organized!

The ambulance ride was a little less scary, because at least there were paramedics with us so it wasn’t the completely helpless panic feeling I had when I was with her by myself. She started waking up a bit in the ambulance and was miserable, so I sang with her until we got to the hospital. They gave her some tylenol and apple juice at the hospital, and her fever came down pretty quickly (it was 104.5 when the ambulance came, and might have been higher just before the seizure). They couldn’t find anything wrong with her and we’re pretty sure it was a febrile seizure, just caused by her fever and not an underlying problem. As seizures go, it’s the best kind to have, because it doesn’t cause lasting damage.

So after spending most of the day in the ER (they wanted to observe her for a while and make sure the fever stayed down) watching kids’ movies and letting her sleep in my lap, we got to come home and she has been fine so far. I checked on her a lot last night, but she seems really back to normal. Thank God.

It’s the worst feeling in the world, to feel helpless and like you can’t save your own child. That one second when I really thought she might not come out of the seizure was the most horrible thing I’ve experienced in my life. Having this little girl in my life brings me joy every day, but it also makes me crazy vulnerable, capable of a level of fear I would never have imagined before I became a mother. I just hope we never go through that again!