First trip to the Hospital

Ok, I've alluded to this hospital stay twice so I suppose it's only fair to journal what happened on our trip to NC last week.

On Wednesday night, when I put Israel to sleep I noticed he felt a little warm. He went to bed easily though. At 11 he woke up crying and I noticed he was burning up. This was the first time he has been sick since being home. I took off his blankets and pjs and gave him a bottle to hydrate him. Suddenly, he started having these mini seizures. I wasn't sure what was going on because they didn't last long. I woke Will up and I left them and headed to the store and got a thermometer, baby ibuprofen and some pedialyte.

When I got back to the hotel Will reported that Israel had continued to have seizures. His temperature was 100.2 and he threw up his bottle everywhere! We quickly headed to the ER (this was around midnight).

We got to the ER around 12:30 and his temp was 102. Israel seemed pretty normal, chatting and charming the staff. The drs didn't know what to do bc the seizures didn't seem normal and since they didn't witness them they couldn't treat him. Well, around 3 am he had a few more seizures and they were able to see them.

Israel had a cat scan, lumbar puncture, catheter inserted for urine samples, and blood tests. Everything came back clear but in the meantime words like tumor, meningitis and seizure disorder were thrown out. Will and I were so scared.

Around 6:30 am we were transferred to the WakeMed pediatric hospital. Will went back to our hotel to get some things for us while I rode in the ambulance with Israel.

Around 9 am a nurse practitioner came and examined Israel. She wanted to observe Israel for 24 hours to see if he had any more seizures. Will was back by this time.

Around 10:30, Israel's temperature spiked again and he had about 30 minutes of seizures. At this point they figured out that this was febrile seizures, which means that when he has a fever, his body reacts with seizures. Most kids grow out of it by 3-6 years old. The nurses had not given him medicine since we had arrived at the Ped hospital so they said they would be more careful and we would alternate ibuprofen and Tylenol around the clock to keep his temp down.

The rest of the day and night was pretty calm. The staff was great. We were exhausted and Israel was pretty pitiful. His right arm was bound with an IV board so he was unable to clap or really look at his hands- which was pretty traumatic for him :).

Will went back to class Friday (the reason we were in nc) and the staff was super helpful to give us a quick and early discharge. Israel and I had to go back to our hotel, pack up and check out by 1.

We were discharged with instructions to keep the medicine routine until we were home and confident he was fever free. Israel had a hard time keeping food, formula and medicine down on our journey home. Lots of throwing up!

What we learned from this:

We love our boy. When there was thoughts of illness in our child, we were heartbroken. We wished it could be us instead of him.

God was faithful to us and answered our prayers. I'm glad it's just febrile seizures and not a tumor and that his seizures don't cause brain damage! Also, if/when these episodes happen again, we don't have to go to the hospital every time. We do plan on making an appointment with a pediatric neurologist, but these seizures are supposedly very manageable with ibuprofen/tylenol.

Also, although the timing of going through this when we were out of town was terrible, it was a huge blessing that we were in Raleigh where the health care is excellent.

We're hoping we never have to relive this nightmare! We're glad to be home.