Seizures

James gave Marcus and I the scare of a lifetime the other day when he had a seizure out of nowhere. Here's the story:

It was Thursday morning, and Marcus was home since his new class schedule doesn't begin until 11:00 am. The two of us loaded our boys into the car, after a completely normal morning, to drive Connor to preschool. The sun was nice and bright and we noticed James kept closing his eyes because of it. He continued to act sleepy once we turned and were driving away from the sun. I thought it was a bit odd for him to be so tired so soon after waking up, but didn't think much about it. We dropped Connor off and continued driving to run a few errands. James was in and out of little naps in the car the entire time (a little over an hour) and totally quiet.. this is not typical behavior for our little James.

When we arrived back home we took him out of the car and put him on the ground to walk into the apartment. James was staring blankly off into space and wouldn't walk unless Marcus took his hand and pulled him a bit. I finally just went over and picked him up, and he responded to me when I did. I carried him into the house and sat him down on the sofa. Marcus went back into the bedroom to get ready for school and I hopped on the computer. I was only on for a few minutes before I noticed James was sitting totally quiet, in the exact same position I sat him down in, and was staring off into space. At this point I thought he was really quite exhausted. I talked to him, but he didn't respond at all.. I thought he might even be asleep with his eyes wide open. I grabbed one of his stuffed animals and tried to "wake him up" with it. No response. I grabbed his favorite little stuffed puppy (who he ALWAYS greets with a hug, kiss, and smile) but he had no response towards him either. I called for Marcus and told him I thought something might be wrong with James.

Marcus picked James up and carried him into his bedroom, figuring that he would either throw a fit when he laid him down in his bed, or roll over and go to sleep. When he didn't do either, but just continued to stare off into space we really became nervous. I grabbed the thermometer to check his temperature, which ended up being normal, and Marcus checked his heart rate and found it was quite elevated. This is when I became scared. I ran and called our pediatricians office and asked where the closest ER was.

When Marcus lifted James out of his bed he was limp, staring at nothing, and unresponsive. We ran him out to the car and buckled him into his car seat. I sat next to him and put my hand on his heart.. I just wanted the reassurance that came from feeling it beat.. although it was RACING. As we made the 10-15 minute drive to the ER James became increasingly more limp and I had to support his head to keep it upright. His color changed, his eyes started rolling, he began drooling, then bubbling around his mouth, and finally vomiting. He was in and out of consciousness and I just kept praying, "Please keep my baby alive, please keep my baby alive." Remember, I didn't know it was a seizure at this point and was scared it might be something worse.

When we arrived at the hospital Marcus took James from his car seat, his body totally limp, eyes wide open and blank, and ran with him into the ER. I parked the car and then ran in to meet them.

It was SUCH a relief once I saw James in the arms of the Dr's and nurses. They immediately began asking all sorts of questions and hooking James up to all sorts of monitors. It took him a good 10-15 minutes before he started making eye contact with others and started crying. It just got better from that point on and he made a full recovery within an hour or so.

We were sent home from the hospital later on that afternoon and you would never know anything happened to James by the way he acted the rest of the day. He was his normal, giggly, energetic, little self. Of course, he was quite spoiled the rest of the day...well, even now he's still getting his own way far more than he probably should :)

He had a follow up appointment with his pediatrician yesterday and will have some more tests run in the near future. Everything continues to be well at this point. Seizures aren't terribly uncommon in children James' age, but the doctor was a bit surprised that his seizure came on out of what seems to be nowhere.

I'll keep my blog updated as we find out more. Until then we're just keeping a close eye on the little guy and enjoying him being back to normal!