Monday, August 18, 2014

A Quick Vacation Turned into a Trip to the Hospital

At the beginning of August, we decided that we would like to take a quick trip to visit some of Tom’s family & friends near the Joplin area.  We thought that since school would be starting and our schedule wouldn’t be as flexible that we would like to leave the day after Miles’ first birthday party.  A great plan right?

Well, after the birthday party, we put the kids to bed and began to pack up our stuff for a short little trip.  I had already set aside our clothes and things, but just needed to get them packed up.  It is so much easier to do this when the kids are asleep and when we have used the toiletries.  Things seemed to be falling into place.

The next morning, I woke up with no voice.  This never happens to me.  In all my 10+ years teaching, I think I only lost my voice twice.  I should have known from that, maybe a trip wasn’t in the cards for us, but I thought nothing of it and was ready to get away for a couple of days.  I worked in our church’s nursery that morning, filling in for someone who was gone, and then came home to begin loading up the Jeep with our stuff.  We quickly grabbed a bite to eat at our local QT (that place is really way to close to our house), and then headed down the road. 

We had the DVD player set up for our kids to watch while traveling, since Miles can face front now, they each had their own screen to watch.  Oh my, the luxuries that kids have these days.  I remember playing guessing games with my dad to songs on the radio for entertainment while we traveled.  We didn’t have DVD players or anything like that.  Anyways, usually about halfway through the movie, they will both be asleep and we turn it off, but this time neither of them fell asleep.  I should have seen that as a sing as well, but call me crazy but I just was happy to get out of town for a bit.

We finally made it to Tom’s aunt’s house and were able to settle in for a while.  They live out in the country, so it is nice to just sit and relax.  There were a few toys for the kids, but mostly they chased each other.  Miles was not quite himself and became really fussy and clingy.  I thought he felt a little warm, but nothing unusual.  So at about the time we were eating dinner, he was just super fussy, we gave him some Tylenol to help with some teething.  Later on that night we tried to get him ready for bed, and he just wasn’t having it.   He absolutely did not want to go to sleep.  It had been about 3 or 4 hours since we last gave him some Tylenol, and I realized that we didn’t have enough for another dose, so Tom went with his cousin to get some more.  I decided that I would try to rock Miles to sleep out in the living room while watching TV.  Sometimes that constant rhythm and the dull noise of the TV puts him to sleep when nothing else works.  I thought I’d give it a try.

No sooner had a started rocking, then I felt him jerk his body, and I thought that he had finally fallen asleep and was jerking in his sleep.  All of a sudden, I noticed that he kept doing it and it was in a constant rhythm.  I went into the kitchen to ask his cousin what he was doing, when she saw him and we realized that he was having a seizure.  I became so scared.  I had never seen anybody doing that before.  She quickly called EMS and they told us what to do over the phone until the ambulance got there. 

It seemed like his seizure lasted for a long time, but in actuality it was probably only a couple of minutes.  While I was holding Miles, Tom’s uncle and family prayed for him and circled around him.  I can’t even begin to say how peaceful that made me feel.  My first thoughts up to that point were dark, that I was going to lose another son.  Once he finished the seizure, we headed to the local hospital where they stuck him with needles and ran a couple of tests.  Once everything came back clear and negative, they let us go home at about 1:00 am.  We thought about driving back to Wichita that night, but everyone was so tired, and Jaycee spent the night with his cousins that we just were going to leave the next day. 

Well, since we had such a late night we woke up late that next morning.  We ate a little breakfast and went to go pick up Jaycee from Tom’s cousin’s house.  While we were there, Jaycee was loving the attention from the older kids.  They were 16 and 18.  Miles seemed to be doing alright and I kind of wanted to watch him and see how he was doing before we left just in case something else should happen.  Well, it did, and I’m glad that we were not on the road.  Miles had another seizure and his fever would not come down, so we headed off to a larger hospital with specialists in pediatrics in Joplin. 

Once we got to the hospital, they ran another round of tests on Miles, poking and picking on him, but told us that he had a Febrile Seizure.  That is when a sudden high fever causes a seizure, which is the body’s way of attacking a virus or other ailment.  I was glad to know what it was, but there was no answer as to what was causing his fevers.  After checking and running a lot of tests, the doctors deduced that it was some sort of virus going around that had to run its course.  In the meantime, we were treating the fevers aggressively with Tylenol and Ibuprofen every three hours.  One thing that the doctors in the hospital in Joplin said to us was that the doses on the bottles that we gave him were not enough for him.  Since Miles is a bigger kid that most his age, he needed nearly double what the dosage on the bottle required.  They were very helpful in giving us a sheet to use for the future.  I was so thankful for that and was so concerned about overdosing him, that I didn’t even think about under dosing him.  Which is why the medicine was not really doing its job to keep his fever down.  Once his fever dropped below 100, we felt better and the hospital decided that we were able to go home.  We quickly went to Tom’s cousin’s house to pick up a sleeping Jaycee and drove all the way home.  Since both kids were asleep, we felt like things would be ok for us to be on the road.

It was not the vacation that we had planned, but we were so blessed to have Tom’s family to help with taking care of Jaycee.  That was one thing we really didn’t have to think about.  She was super spoiled by the older kids.  We were also glad to see Tom’s friend, and chat with him for a bit.  We’ve got to try to make another trip there sometime soon.

 

the Ehrlich’s

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