At Least Life with Her Is Never Boring

So, Caetlin decided to make life interesting again by having another seizure yesterday. It was in some ways the scariest one she's had, at least to me.

She went to the zoo in the morning, and spent the afternoon after her nap coloring Easter eggs and having an egg hunt at the park with her play group. She came home happy and talking about having high-fived the panda at the zoo (a guy in a panda suit), and about having collected the pink egg as her special one. She had chocolate smeared on her face.

We were all in the living room, and she was standing at the coffee table, when she started to make a strange noise. She often makes strange noises, so I didn't think anything of it. A second later, though, she fell backward, dead weight, her head cracking sickeningly on the hardwood floor. I ran over to her, calling her name, and picked her up as she was simultaneously limp and jerky in my arms. I said to Bruce, "She's having a seizure," and put her down. I stayed over her, watching her lips turn an alarming shade of blue and her face turn a scary grey, though I could see that she was breathing. When strings of saliva started to bubble out of her mouth, I turned her head to the side so she didn't aspirate any of it.

After maybe a minute- or a year, depending on your perspective- she stopped jerking and started to cry a little bit. She was so hot! We scooped her up and gathered Phoebe and some things and headed to the hospital. We've done this enough that I thought to bring Caetlin's blankies and pacifier and pajamas and some diapers.

Bruce lead-footed it to the emergency room and they saw us pretty quickly. She threw up on the way, all over herself and her car seat. When the nurse first took her vitals, she took her temperature under Caetlin's arm, which gave a reading of 98.9, which seemed awfully cool based on how she felt in my arms. When we were admitted to a triage room, the pediatrician saw us fairly quickly. Her ears and throat looked clear, so he wanted to take a urine sample to rule out UTI. We also discussed whether a CT was necessary, since she had hit her head so hard. His thought was that she was alert and talking, and had only thrown up the once, so it probably wasn't necessary, but if we wanted it for peace of mind, we could certainly justify having one done.

Bruce tried to get Caetlin to give a urine sample by making water in the potty, which would have been more pleasant for all of us, but stressed as she was, she refused, so we had to ask the nurse to take a sample with a catheter. The nurse was awesome; she only cleaned the relevant area of Caetlin's girl parts, rather than scrubbing them all over with the antiseptic, which can't feel good, and she got the catheter in on the first try, which is not always the case. While we had her diaper off, we asked them to take another temperature reading, because they were not going to give her any fever reducer based on the earlier reading. We could see she didn't feel good, even as the effects of the seizure wore off. The anal temperature came to 102.2, so she was dosed with Tylenol.

As the Tylenol took effect, she clearly started to feel better. We had the CT done, for our own peace of mind (Natasha Richardson was to the forefront of my mind). The CT was clear for head injury, but did show some fluid on her middle ear and around her jawbone. The urine was clean on the microscope (though we won't be clear on that front until the culture hopefully comes back negative as well), and the pediatrician's best guess is a middle ear infection. That or some random virus, which is always a possibility. He prescribed antibiotics and sent us home.

So, we trooped home, four hours after we left the house. Her fever was down and she fell asleep right away, after having a perfunctory dinner. When she woke up this morning her fever was back up again, so we've kept her dosed with fever-reducer all day, alternating Tylenol and Motrin every three hours. If her fever is still up tomorrow, we'll be taking her to her regular pediatrician for further evaluation.

So that's where we are. Odds are, she'll be fine. As I maintain, kids get random fevers all the time. Caetlin is just more dramatic about it. More updates as events warrant.