This is going to be a long post.
This week was the most trying week for us, not only since we became parents, but in our whole lives. We have been through paramedics, Children's Health Care, the hospital, our pediatrician and now the pharmacist. Bradley is fine after all of this, but it really put us through the wringer.
Monday night, Bradley came down with a fever. Tuesday, Dad stayed home with him while he was happy and active with a low grade fever and stomach flu symptoms. Dad came down with the stomach flu, too. While Mom was putting him down for a nap, he started acting funny, staring off into space and babbling. He had a 103 degree temperature. He then stopped breathing, his eyes rolled back in his head and he started losing color. We thought for sure he was going to die -- he was struggling for air and all the life in him seemed to just blank out. Dad checked his airway, but his mouth stayed shut while he gurgled. His body was limp, and was not seizing. There was a lot of panicked yelling and screaming (from us) going on. While Mom called 911, Dad put him in the tub and ran cool water down his back. He started waking up and crying. 911 told us to put him in some towels, which we did. He was tuckered out but, thankfully, alive and okay.
The paramedics came and all of Bradley's vital signs were fine. So, we drove him to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta urgent care clinic. After a two hour wait, which put us at 9:30 PM before we were seen, they did a ton of tests which were painful to watch and guessed that it might have been a febrile (fever induced) seizure. During this visit, we learned the power of the Elmo's World theme song playing through YouTube on Dad's phone to keep Bradley calm. He was a champ through having blood drawn out of his little vein. It was so hard to believe that they could get any blood from such a little arm, but they did. They sent off blood and urine work to the lab and we had to wait an hour to hear that everything which could be rapidly tested came out fine. We went home at 11:00 PM with instructions to call the hospital if he had another seizure and being told that we would get a call within a few days if any other results came back positive.
We resigned ourselves to watch Bradley all night in our bedroom, in a pack and play where we could take shifts. His temperature spiked again when we got home at around 12:30 and he had another seizure, one that was more easily recognizable. He gurgled, then blew spit bubbles and he stared blankly while his little arms flailed, but he did not stop breathing. At least we knew what to do as we had page, line and verse on febrile seizures from the clinic. We put him on his side on the floor and let the seizure take its course. We tried to keep him and ourselves calm (in contrast to the literal madhouse of screaming and crying and running every which way when he seized the first time). He nodded off to sleep on his stomach.
We called Scottish Rite children's hospital and asked whether we should bring him in. They told us that since he suffered two seizures in 24 hours (actually two in six hours), we should come to the emergency room. So, we took him to the ER and the doctor decided to admit him for observation. Of course, we are watching him like a hawk. Dad is still sick as a dog and he took a sickness-induced hour nap on the gurney in the ER room while we waited till 4:30 AM for Bradley to be admitted. Mom couldn't sleep. We got admitted and taken to our closet-sized room which had a just uncomfortable enough rollout couch to fit one of us. We each took one hour shifts watching him. Because he was moving around like you'd expect an eighteen month old to do, we could not keep machine monitoring equipment on him and hooked up. They kept him on Motrin every six hours.
Towards the end of hour six from the last dose of Motrin, Bradley had another seizure during one of Dad's shifts. He was on his stomach and his head lifted slightly up, his legs curled up behind him and his body stiffened up. His eyes were open, but not really looking like he was really there. He came out of it fine again. When he was switched to alternating Tylenol and Motrin, at our request (it was suggested earlier by the paramedics), he became the usual Bradley, happy and active, wanting to walk around and explore, read books and watch TV. He still wasn't eating and had stomach flu symptoms. He still knew his letters, so he did not appear to have suffered ill effects in the noggin.
We were told that we would have to stay another twenty-four hours. Having three seizures in twenty-four hours is unusual. If these keep coming, they might have to do a spinal tap to rule out meningitis. Bradley's Aunt Dierdra and Cousin Dylan came to the rescue with walking and feeding the dog, navigating the chaos we left our house in to get us clothes and toiletries.
You wouldn't know Bradley was sick. Having stomach flu symptoms, he was not allowed in the children's play area. So, he was all over wherever in that hospital he was allowed -- jumping on and off the elevators with accompanying screams of excitement, exclaiming "Bye!" to all the people left on the elevator when the doors closed, slinking along the windows reaching for his own hand in his reflection, proudly claiming the gigantic tile mosaic in the shape of an "S" on the floor with a loud "S!", screaming "Ernie!" every time he saw the life-size Ernie from Sesame Street in the library (a new one on us), marveling at the fish tanks and the hospital's giant electronic fish tank (hard to explain any better), picking out a bear, a Pablo (from the Backyardigans) and a host of other toys at the gift shop, etc... Still not eating, but doing much better and NO FEVER.
We tried to stay up again the next night to watch him every second. On the Tylenol-Motrin rotation, he didn't get another fever that night. But, at about four a.m., we could no longer stay up and collapsed in a sick, twisted heap on the one-person bed. (Mom had gotten her first symptoms of this stomach flu that day.) We just couldn't last any longer - we had to trust that he would stay fever-free on the fever reducers.
We got discharged in the morning. As we weaned him off the painkillers, he relapsed into a fever at about 8:00 at night. We called our pediatrician to see if we had to go back to the hospital. Ultimately, after an hour wait for a call back, a 20 minute explanation from a nurse about "what I would do if I were you," and then a 45 minute wait till she talked to the doctor on call about the answers to the million questions we had, we were told that we would not have to go back to the hospital. We woke up at 1:30 AM and 4:30 AM to administer painkillers/fever reducers. His stomach flu symptoms subsided that day.
We went to Bradley's regular doc the next morning. She identified an ear infection on top of his stomach flu, which was getting better. We got a Zithromax prescription. He still kept coming down with a low-grade fever even after we gave the Zithromax. As Bradley is sitting in Mom's arms, he looks across the room when the doctor moves out of his way and says, clear as a bell, "Daddy" for the first time and walks over to Dad and gives him a hug. Sniff! This, too, in front of the doctor who was worried because she could never get him to talk. (The next day, Bradley also clearly called Mom "Mommy," we are happy to report.)
We got a call at 8 PM tonight (Friday) from Children's Healthcare saying that his test results came back positive for a urinary tract infection. Dad asked if the Zithromax would treat that and, if not, could they recommend a drug to treat both the ear and UTI at once. They prescribed another antibiotic which took an hour and a half to get because the pharmacy spelled his name wrong by one letter. A long story, but the short of it is that the pharmacist told Children's Healthcare over the phone about Dad, "He's yelling at people." Damn right, we are traumatized this week and we are not going to have some idiots at the pharmacy slow down finally getting Bradley 100% better.
Not to wax poetic here, but it's hard not to think about how many other people in the world over thousands of years must have experienced their child going limp in their arms and being helpless to do anything about it. This scene must have played out millions and millions of times and it promises to happen millions more times. Your heart can't help but ache for those who had the fear and shock we did of seeing such a thing end in the tragic disappointment of never seeing their child grow up. Although the moment was short in actual time, there was a monolithic divide between the moment of fear where Bradley was limp and lifeless and the moment his cries let us know that he would be okay. It was like an empty canyon filling with pure, tearful joy. We looked at each other and cried with joy and embraced our toweled, wet baby inbetween our tearful, smiling faces.
We are so happy to have our boy back. Now, if Mom and Dad could only get over their stomach flu!
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