Scariest Moment Yet

I'll just cut right to the chase; Stephen had a seizure in the middle of Friday night/Saturday morning. And it was definitely the scariest moment since he was born to date.

Around 12:40 AM Saturday morning I heard Stephen making some gasping noises on the monitor. Thank god I was still awake because it wasn't very loud. It was a similiar sound he makes when he laughs, so at first I didn't think much of it and I could see on the monitor that his left hand was shaking under his swaddle blanket. I also didn't think much of it because he's always fighting to get out of his swaddle. But thank god I went to check on him anyway because his legs were also shaking and his eyes were wide open staring at the wall. I couldn't get him to look at me, so I immediately got Bill up and we unswaddled him. Bill picked him up and tried to get him to "snap out of it" but couldn't. It was then that we really realized that Stephen was having a seizure and his face started twitching.

We didn't know what to do and thought about calling the doctors, but decided to call 911. I have never before had to call 911 and was scared to death. As soon as I started speaking to the dispatcher, I totally lost it and admittedly got a little hysterical on the phone. Thankfully the dispatcher was very kind and worked at calming me down and gave us instructions on what to do with Stephen. And then as soon as I heard the ambulance sirens, I panicked again. What I didn't know about 911 before, is that they actually make you stay on the phone until you make eye contact with EMS, so Bill ran down the street to meet them and show them how to find our condo.

The EMTs and the fire department were here within minutes and immediately swarmed into Stephens room. I think there were like 9 guys in his little room evaluating him while I frantically tried to figure out how to detach him from dialysis. Within a minute or two of the EMTs arriving, Stephen stopped seizing and they swept him up and into the ambulance. I rode along with Stephen in the ambulance while Bill followed behind. Actually Bill followed in front since he made it to the ER before the ambulance! Which was pretty crazy considering we rode the whole way with sirens and lights.

In the ER, Stephen had a CT scan which didn't show any signs of brain trauma and we were admitted overnight for observation. It wasn't until about 5 AM that they finally got us up to his room and we were all beyond exhausted.

On Saturday we had a consult with neurology which left more questions than answers as to why he had a seizure, so we need to get an MRI and an EGG to try to answer those questions. Luckily, we can go those tests as an outpatient (we actually will probably go to Children's National Hospital downtown for the tests), so we were discharged from the hospital late last night. All in all we spent about 19 hours in the hospital and slept about two hours since Thursday night. Hopefully Stephen will get his MRI this week and they'll find it was a one-time thing and we can put this whole episode behind us.

Now all three of us are working on catching up on our sleep and trying to get back on our normal schedule. It has certainly been one heck of a long and stressful weekend.