Febrile Seizure

UPDATE: Lulu went to school today. She has taken to carrying around her "mometer" and knows how to take her own temperature when asked. She has run a slight fever a couple of evenings but Motrin seems to be knocking it out. She's been on the antibotics since Friday and so the Peditrician told us she was good to know and not contagious. Honestly, if I didn't tell people she had it they wouldn't know about it honestly. She's been in good spirits despite missing the camping trip over the weekend her Dad had planned for her birthday.

I'd heard of those before but had never experienced one and thought they were things other people's children. People who didn't watch their children's fever's close enough. Or who were prone to such things. Not MY children. My children don't have seizures.

Until Thursday night.

Thursday day Lulu's babysitter texted and told me she was running a slight fever. 99.6 I think. Not too high but the school was on red alert being that 10% of the student population had been out sick that week with fevers. Plus 8 teachers and staff. So they wouldn't take her. Luckily babysitter's kid was sick too so they would just hang out all day. Yay me, I didn't have to leave work.

About lunch time I called to check and her fever had gone down with Tylenol and come back and had gotten up to 101.2. More Tylenol. She was fine. I continued working.

I picked her up after work and she felt warm. Babysitters child looked ill. Lulu just looked tired. So I took her home where she ate no dinner but we ran some errands. She didn't feel THAT warm to me.

We got home and took her temperature and it was 102. I called my mother in law who suggested cold cloths and Tylenol.

We gave her the rag. Not the medicine. Because I'm a horrible mother I'm going to admit that I'm not a huge fan of fever reducers. I generally believe that the body NEEDS to run a fever for a reason, like it's killing an infection and a low grade fever, such as what she had, didn't need it really. I did Internet research on this that night so it's not like I didn't care. I thought she'd be okay.

Micah and I went to bed and just as I was dozing off he checked on her one last time. It was about 10:30pm. All of the sudden I heard, "Lacy come in here now."

I jumped up (which is tough at 8 months pregnant) and went into her room where I experienced my child's seizure up close and personal.

Her eyes were open but not looking at anything, her little hands were clenched and she was shaking all over. The scariest part was her gasping for air. I spoke to her, sat her up, tried to get her to drink water and she was barely responsive. I grabbed her and we ran to the car. Micah did almost 80 getting us to the nearest emergency room that I could think of and Brian and his girlfriend Sommer met us there.

I don't know what her temp was when we arrived. But they gave her Tylenol. They brought us back to a room and 30 minutes later tested her temperature again. 102.8. They gave her Motrin. From there Brian and I spent the next 3 hours talking to Dr's and nurses. Lu had a chest X-ray and they took a urine sample. They told Brian the chest xray looked "okay" when they took it.

At about 1:45am I sent Brian home. Micah was sleeping in the car and it just seemed like a waste since they had told him she looked okay.

At 2:30am I told a nurse we were going to leave. Lulu seemed MUCH better, she was up and talking and playing. Within 1o minutes both Dr's and our nurse were in the room telling me I couldn't leave yet. Turns out, she had Pneumonia. Has. Chest X-ray was not all clear.

In the end we ended up leaving at about 3am, after getting there at 11pm. She has pneumonia. So we have antibiotics. We have to watch her fever carefully but that's about it. She actually seems spunky right now which is good.

But that seizure was scary. Possibly the scariest thing I've ever seen.