Scarriest Day Ever!

I've endured a lot of scary things in my life, but nothing quite like this day.

At about 2:00 a.m. I awoke to Jake screaming.  I was so tired and for just a moment I wanted to ask Jason to go check on Jake, but then as suddenly as a clap of thunder, I bolted out of bed.  I didn't feel or hear the prompting, but I know that I was prompted by the Holy Ghost in that very moment.  

The first thing I noticed was that Jake was screaming--not crying, screaming!

I picked him up and felt his head for a fever.  As I held him in my arms and walked to the hall closet to get the digital thermometer, his little body began shaking uncontrollably. 

 I ran in to wake up Jason.  (Poor guy jumped out of bed with such a jolt....almost gave him a heart attack.)

We took his temperature as soon as the seizure stopped and it was 102.9 degrees.

As soon as we had the temp, he started in to another seizure. 

When it was over we gave him some Ibuprofen to help reduce the fever.

Then another seizure started.  When that one ended, I called 911.

The ambulance showed up and took Jake (and me) to the emergency room.

They got his fever under control, did a chest x-ray, and took a urine sample, told me he was having febrile seizures, and discharged him.  I was shocked!  We had only been there for a few hours (2:30-6:30), and Jake was obviously still very sick, but they were sending us home.

I called Jason and told him to come get us.  Then I called a good friend and asked her to go over to my house to be with my girls so that Jason could leave.

As I waited in the ER lobby, he had another seizure--this one bigger than the others. 

They rushed him back into the ER. 

This time the ER doctor and the pediatrician came in and when she saw the seizure, she immediately knew this was more than a febrile seizure and called in the neurologist.

The neurologist said he was having benign myoclonic seizures.  Not overly dangerous, but still scary.

At this point, the ER team kicked into gear. 

No longer were they sending us home as though nothing big was going on.

Within about 10 minutes they were putting in an IV, which I must say was done with some mad skills.  It's tough to do an IV on a baby--even tougher when the baby is having seizures.

Once they had him on IV fluids, they were able to administer the anti-seizure medicine. This was around 7:00 a.m. and by this point he had endured approximately 40 seizures.

It was such a relief when the medicine took effect and his body finally began to relax.

Later in the day he was prepped for an MRI and a spinal tap.

This meant sedating him, which turned out to be so incredibly traumatic. 

Strapping him down, oxygen mask, a team of about 8 people, not enough sedating medicine.

They gave him the dose they had figured would be right and it hardly had any affect on him. 

Jason and I sat right outside the door and heard the doctor yell,

"Would somebody please run down to the pharmacy and get some more of this _____?!" 

I can't remember what the medicine was called.

And a moment later a guy went running out of the room.
(There's something very scary about seeing them run.)

This additional dose finally sedated him well enough to do the MRI.

When it was over I carried him back to his room and I've got to say, he was funny.  Jake is funny when he's coming out of sedation.  And yeah, the medicine was already wearing off.  They said he was metabolizing it too fast.  One dose should have gotten him through the MRI and the spinal tap, but as it turned out they had to give him a third dose.

When they were done with the spinal tap, he was able to sleep for quite a while.

They gave him these little stuffed animals. 

Normally, he would have probably played with them, but not this day.

Throughout the day, I was amazed and humbled by how many of our friends stepped in and helped.
Thank you to all of you who watched my girls, brought us food, water, and snacks in the hospital, gave blessings, came to the hospital, brought meals into our home, and visited us in the hospital and at home!!!
And thank you for all your love and support through phone calls, emails, texts, and facebook posts!
 Thank you, thank you, thank you to all my amazing friends!