A mere couple of hours after I snapped the picture of the boys watching cartoons in my previous post, things took a turn for the worse. At about 11:00 I noticed Finn felt really hot and when I took his temperature it was 104.4. I gave him a dose of Tylenol and put a call in to the pediatrician to see if I should take him to Urgent Care. A few minutes after that I walked into the family room to find him face down on the couch having a seizure. When I picked him up he was dead weight and unresponsive. I started yelling for Bruce, who came running from outside. I handed Finn to Bruce and called 911, screaming at the poor operator to send an ambulance.
The ambulance (and to Ezra’s delight, fire truck) came and took Finn and me down to Huntington’s ER. The paramedics could see that I was scared to death, and they assured me right away that he would be fine. They said what the doctors later confirmed — Finn had a febrile seizure caused by a spike in his fever. Apparently it happens a lot with little kids because their bodies can’t tolerate the sudden rise in temperature. They all did a good job of assuring me that he was OK, while confirming that seeing your child having a seizure is terrifying (and that we did the right thing by calling 911).
It took Finn a while to recover once we got to the hospital. He was very sleepy and we couldn’t seem to keep him awake for more than a few seconds, which was worrisome. When I finally felt like we were out of the woods, I snapped a picture for posterity’s sake.
About an hour after he got a dose of Motrin, he finally started to perk up. And by perk up, I mean beg for food. Luckily we had a granola bar or we might have been in trouble.
Our stay in the ER lasted about three and a half hours and when we left his temperature was 99.8. He’s had a few more spikes since we got home, but this time we jump right on it with medication and a lukewarm bath. So far, so good.
I was worried that Ezra would have some anxiety over this episode, but he seems fine. We were lucky enough to have Jerri come get him from the ER so he didn’t have to wait the whole time. (Everyone should have a great friend who lives a couple of blocks from the hospital and volunteers weekly in the ER so she can just waltz right back to the restricted area!) Once they got to her house, she tried to grill Ezra for details but he had none. I think the extent of his reporting was that the fire truck came.
All kidding aside, this incident made me realize just how fortunate our little family has been health-wise. I know several children with serious life-threatening health issues, and parents who have to deal with ambulance rides, ERs and hospital stays on a regular basis. I feel so lucky that Finn’s seizure is not related to any greater problem, and my heart goes out to the families I know and love who have to handle medical emergencies all the time.
good to read that it is all over and we hope that the Horror of not being able to do much more than to get urgent help will soon fade away…
when feaver goes up, we learned from a very good pediatric friend, it might help to use what we in German call “Wadenwickel” which should be a leg compress, using two cooled or cold wet towels around the calves wrapped in another towel -usualy Emi accepted them easily, when she noticed that it had a good effect on her body
but this probably does not help when there is a sudden and unexpected fever convulsion,
but it became standard in treating Emi’s fever, whenever she felt like a hundred degrees F
and YES, it is VERY GOOD to have a friend like this!!!
Love: Jokke and Merja