Since I was unsure that anything had happened and we were just going to keep an eye on her, I decided to bring her back to the day home and just go to work and monitor her with phone calls every so often. At lunch, there was nothing that seemed to be wrong. I had spoken to Jean and told her to keep an eye on Julia�s behaviour and if she seemed feverish or ill she ought to call and I would leave work. I didn�t get a phone call so I assumed (mistakenly, as it turns out) that Julia was OK. I called to say that I would be a few minutes late and the day home lady told me that everything was OK and I didn�t have to worry about anything.
I came downstairs, expecting to see them playing, to have that magical moment when they first catch sight of me and drop whatever they are doing to tear across the room, fling themselves into my arms and cry out in delight �Mama!!� But instead, I came in and only Elena came running. Julia was splayed out on the couch, flush and sweaty, the day home lady sitting next to Julia, stroking my daughter�s head worriedly. She looked up at me, the familiar wild look in her eyes that I recognized as post-seizure reflection.
�I think she had a seizure.�
I looked down at Julia, took in her small sweaty body, her crimson flushed cheeks and the musky odour of having lost bowel control and nodded. �Yeah she did. I think you�re right.�
She said that just after I had called, Julia had said that she was tired and wanted to lay down. But once she lay down and closed her eyes, she began having convulsions. At first Jean thought that she was cold and had covered he with a blanket but as they continued she realized that she was having a seizure. The seizure lasted about 2 minutes and then Julia fell into her typical post-ictal state of deep, unrousable sleep. It had only been a few minutes before I arrived. Then Jean looked up at me and said �I think she may have had one earlier too.�
I must have looked confused because she clarified that at lunchtime, Julia was walking to the room to eat when she stopped in her tracks and just stood there staring. She tried to get her attention and called her name to �snap her out of it� but she couldn�t. Julia stood there for a moment and then sat down, still unaware of her surroundings and still unresponsive to her name or to any other stimulus. It was about a minute and a half before she �came back� to herself and went on to lunch as though nothing happened. She was apologetic that she didn�t call but I knew that it was hard to understand that being unresponsive was a form of seizure and it was so easy to call it daydreaming or spacing out so I just shrugged it off. But two completely different seizures in one day, only half a day after the previous seizure, with no fever in two out of three of them? It was almost too much to take in. I was supposed to go back to school to finish submitting my marks but instead I was off to the Emergency room.
When we got there, Julia fell asleep in my arms and we got in to see the doctor fairly quickly. He looked her over a bit and determined that she would be admitted for further testing since there was evidence that her seizures were becoming less febrile in nature. I immediately called my department head and said I wouldn�t be going to the conference I was scheduled to leave for on the weekend after all since my girl was being put in the hospital. They were AWESOME about it and no one made any mention about the appropriateness of my response.
The nurses were OK, except for the one bee-yotch that thought I was crazy, that there wasn�t very much wrong with my little girl, that had the nerve to ask me �Is this your first child?� along with a not so subtle frustration at the uber-crazy mom who wouldn�t leave her alone when I asked her to check and re-check how she was taking Julia�s temperature. She would tell me, things were normal when, looking at Julia�s sweaty sleeping form, nothing was normal about the way she was simply laying in bed, eyes glazed and feverish crimson circles dotting her cheeks. And, curiously enough, when other nurses would come and check on Julia�s temperature, and find it (surprise!) incredibly high, they would record it on her chart and the bee-yotch would come in and exclaim how Julia was spiking temperatures and she couldn�t understand why it would yo-yo like that.
So, while perched on the roll-away cot next to my daughter, I held her hand as she vacillated, alternating between lying in bed awake and lying in bed asleep. Sometimes she would look better, and then she would backslide into a puddle of tiredness, lacking the energy to even lift her head off the pillow.
10:26 a.m. - 2006-03-20