Both kids are sleeping (strike that–Joshua keeps stirring) and I’m longing for the pillow, but wanted to write an update. Partly for you and partly for me to document before my fuzzier brain gets fuzzier with time.
How grateful we are for the influx of texts, calls and messages. What a community of praying friends we have across time zones!
Long story short, it looks likely that the seizure episode last night was a result of acid reflux. (That sounds crazy even as I write it.)
After our last 2 appts with Dr. Nielsen–our pediatrician/medical sleuth–I’ve started feeling like I’m watching some kind of CSI episode because I leave saying, “How did she figure that out?” Last time it was her figuring out that Joshua was really older than we’d thought and our due date had been off by at least a week.
Yesterday at the end of lunch, Lizzy had a few-second shudder “something” of her head that made Scott and I both look at each other with a What was that? exchange. And Scott had been with Lizzy when she had the seizure after dinner (I was at Jazzercise). It was about 15 minutes after she’d eaten dinner and he was changing her diaper in her room upstairs. At some point, she started staring off and he couldn’t get her attention. Her lips went from fleshy to purple to fleshy and back to purple. She vomited 4 times. Somewhere in that he was able to call 911. Oh, how grateful I am for Lizzy to have had her calm Daddy to be wise to get her on her side, loving and caring for her through those agonizing 2-3 minutes before she became lucid. It was about 6:20pm on Wed, March 6.
I was gathering my things after class when Scott called. I’ll never forget his tone. Calm but very firm.
“I need you to come home. NOW. Lizzy’s ok but she’s had a seizure…” I have little recollection of what he said after that.
I ran out, calling to friends to pray. My sweet friend, Christy, asked if she could drive me home or come with and I readily accepted.
I sprinted into the kitchen from the garage, dropping my bag and running to my baby on her Daddy’s lap, who was shaking and crying, surrounded by 4-5 big EMT kind men in our not-so-big living room. Vomit covered a good portion of her head.
I understood, really for the first time, how parents say they’d change places with their child. It’s a no brainer.
They checked her blood glucose and it was fine at 105 (a relief to this diabetic mama) and tried to get vitals but she flailed a lot, undone.
Thankfully, Joshua was asleep almost this entire time, just waking up when we were getting Lizzy cleaned up and ready for her and I to go in the ambulance. Thankfully, Christy was there to hold our little 2-month-old blessing and be there to help Scott get Joshua packed up to meet us at the hospital. (A shout out to her for cleaning up an incredibly-undesirable changing table and putting away/tidying up our kitchen. We came home to no clean up needed. What a blessing that was!)
We’re grateful that Nemours Children’s Hospital just opened in October, just 15 minutes away, so it was a quick no-sirens ride. They saw us right away with no wait, another blessing. They were great, but Lizzy’s a little girl who’s slow to warm up to strangers on good days–and you add the reality of a small room busting with people talking and she was a mess. Oh, the mama heart to calm her! (Thanks to our wonderful pastor, John Gullett, who surprised us at the ER.)
After drawing a vial of blood from her heel 😦 and running an EKG, she checked out OK and the ER doctor said it seemed like an “Absence Seizure.” About right now I should give the obvious disclaimer that I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV so this is my best go at explaining what we heard. If I heard correctly, that term is for seizures that aren’t explained another way. He didn’t seem concerned but they always refer a patient who’d had a seizure to a cardiologist or neurologist.
We were discharged about 10pm…I think.
We’d already had an appt for Lizzy the next day (today) with her pediatrician for another issue, so we were glad to get in to talk with her. She listened to what’d happened. Her thoughts are that Lizzy has late-onset reflux or might have had it awhile and it’s been “silent.” Scott’s noticed that she’s had some coughing spells recently that would make more sense if that’s true. The lunchtime episode would also make sense because it’d have been a reaction to the gross taste of reflux.
Scott was the one to catch the fact that both happened after a meal. She asked how long after dinner that he had her on the changing table. He said 15 minutes and she said that how he described the seizure could have been a result of reflux. (This is where I can’t do justice in how she explained it.) Even the issue that had made us originally make the appt for her has potential ties to reflux.
The interesting thing was how we were in the office for Joshua’s 2-month check up, too, and the question we were going to ask was about his potential reflux that we’d just been starting to notice the last week or so that he his spit-up was curdley, a sign often of reflux. His birth weight has shot up from the 5th percentile to the 50th, and she was asking about how he was nursing and how often he was feeding. I wearily told her he’d eat all the time if I offered and how it was about 2-3 hours during the day and 2.5-3.5 at night. This mama’s desperately needing an answer to his not transitioning to longer sleep stretches. She said, he was actually getting too much, she thought. (What a total contrast to when I tried to nurse Lizzy!) She speculated that he, like us when we have indigestion, wanted to drink milk to soothe the burn.
Oh my word. If this solves the sleep problem, I’m putting her in our will! She wrote a prescription to start him on a low-dose Zantac for kids and he should see some improvement soon. The little guy is saying yippee!
We have a follow-up with the neurologist–best in the state, we keep hearing–tomorrow, back at Nemours where his office is. The EEG will be at 11am and the appt with him at 1:30pm EST.
The only factor that we’re not sure how it would factor into the diagnosis Dr. Nielsen proposed with Lizzy’s poor coordination the last few days (worse that normal, because I always joke she’s a step away from falling–blessed late walker that she was). She also was really leary of getting down from chairs and stepping down off steps yesterday both Scott and I noticed. But today, she’s been fine.
When we got home, she got a bath that got out most of the smell of the night we’ll never forget. Then, she hit the pillow and was out in minutes. The night was uneventful. Whew. We were glad for our video monitor our friend had given us to be able to have a little witness in her room all night. Soothing balm for our hearts to watch her rest so soundly.
Today she’s been fine–back to her fun self apart from being tired. That nap? She didn’t sleep as much as I’d thought or as she needed but it was a good start. I knew she was tired when I was singing to her before I laid her down and she said, “Bye.”
Well, ok then.
Bye bye night we’d like to forget but one in which we got to experience God’s grace for each moment. Dependency opportunities never come in the easy moments. More than ever I was made aware that these kids aren’t really ours–they are on loan from the Lord for a period of time…hopefully a long, long time. I thought it was so true when Scott said, “I take by faith that God loves them more do because we love them a lot.”
ScottandAngie.org 