Febrile Seizure: Round 2

Gillian got sick at lightening speed last night, getting chills and shaking in the bath. I had given her Tylenol at 6 last night because she seemed "achy", and Motrin at 9 because she was warm and put her to bed. I checked in on her a couple of times to see if she was breathing ok (she had suddenly become congested). At 10:30 I heard her make a gurgling gutteral shriek, and I ran in to find her convulsing in her crib. I pick her up right away and held her tiny pale body to me-she was turning blue, she was frothing at the mouth, and was not breathing. I called 911. The operator told me to lay her on her back, which I did. He asked if she was breathing, and I said I didn't know, couldn't tell because she was convulsing, but I didn't think so. She finally took a breath and stopped convulsing, and he told me to lay her on her side, where she vomited (the siezure probably lasted a couple of minutes). He told me to take her clothes off, which I did. They dispatched an ambulance, and they got here within a few minutes. We took her temperature- 104.7 degrees. They took us to St. Francis' ER, where they stablilized her temp, and where we were until 2am.

Today we have dealt with temps between 102.5 and 105, while on the Tylenol/Motrin regimen, which was not controlling her temp. We resorted to warm baths, as instructed at 4:30 am and 1:30 this afternoon ("if you need to quickly get her temp down"), which also didn't work. I called the on call doc when she and I woke up from a nap and her temp was 105, and she recalculated doses based on Gillian's weight and instructed me to up the dose on both. I was thrilled when we got her temp down to 102.5....

So, this is when you hole up and pray for it to pass quickly. You hope you don't get sick, too. You hope there are no more seizures, but just in case, you are willing to break the sleep rules and have her sleep with you. She could have aspirated on her vomit last night had I not heard her, and that terrifies me.

More than anything, while I watched her convulsing last night (sure she could die any second), in no uncertain terms it became clear to me that I value Gillian's life above anything else on this planet. Only later when I cried out some of the stress and fear of the whole night (which I did solo because Sean was out with friends up till the last little bit of the ER stay), did I realize that if anything ever happened to her, I would want to die too. I honestly don't know how people live through the loss of a child.