Seizure

I hate it when the school calls. Because they don't call to tell me my kid is cussing at the teacher or picking fights. They call because Mo is having a seizure.

Yes, she's on medication. We switched to Trileptal when the Tegretol quit being the silver bullet. On the whole, it's been much better.

But today, I got a call at work, Mo was seizing. I'm on my way.

I could see the emergency vehicles when I turned the corner to the school, so I knew it was a bad one. You know, when you're thinking about getting your freak on, you might know that leads to babies, that might even be the reason you're going at it, but this is not in the literature. Turning the corner to your daughter's elementary school, seeing cop cars and fire trucks and whatnot with their lights going, and knowing they are there for your child? This is a lot to take in.

When I got through the school and out to the playground where she had seized, she was just starting to open her eyes, register the world in a vaguely regular way. My first impression was she'd been postictal for a while. My work is close by, and I don't waste time getting out the door when this call comes, but it still takes a good ten minutes to cover the ground.

The ambulance wasn't there yet, but sometimes she doesn't need transported to the ER, so I wondered if maybe the fire trucks and cop cars were it.

Then I saw the Diastat, and started hearing the story of this seizure, and I knew the ambulance was coming. Any time the Diastat is administered, for one, they want to check her out.

For the uninitiated, it's a rectal syringe of valium, and I guarantee you 10mg of valium up your butt is more party than Axl Rose could maintain through. Mo, however, seems to take it in stride. Sometimes sleeps less after the seizure when it's been administered.

But this time, the Diastat either didn't do the trick (arrest the seizure), or else it would have been even worse without it. And that's hard to picture. The Diastat isn't administered unless the seizure continues past five minutes. Usually it acts almost instantly, but this time, the seizure only got worse. With contortions and body convulsions that shocked even the staffers who have been unfortunate enough to witness Mo in a grand mall fit. By one account, her color changed and she appeared to stop breathing a couple of times.

The seizure had just ended about the time I got to the school, in other words. Maybe the Diastat didn't work or maybe the seizure would have been even bigger and longer without it. I've heard of 45 minute seizures, but I sure as hell hope I never see one.

I rode in the ambulance with her, and she came around a bit in the ride to the hospital. Enough to make it hard to give her oxygen (but Dad, you always tell me not to put things in my nose! I hear her think). She got a stuffed animal from a paramedic, one of several such souvenirs she's collected in her unfortunate career.

At the hospital, she was still zonked enough to let them put a pulse meter on her finger and a blood pressure cuff on. But by the time the slow-ass process in the ER (one hopes that gunshot wounds and heart attacks don't sit for hours waiting to hear what's up), she was relatively full of beans. Not quite up to her usual, but who would expect her to be?

She asked me for the camera, she wanted me to take pictures. Go figure, I forgot the camera. The artist formerly known as Frau Lobster took me by the office on the way to my car, so I grabbed the camera off my desk and got this picture of Mo. She's been fond of this 'two' thing. I'd say it was a Victory sign, but she says 'TWO!' when she does it.



On a side note, the Trileptal isn't a drug they measure blood levels on. If you can tolerate the does and you don't seize, that's the gauge. Which means no blood tests were needed today in the ER. And this is good, I really hate needles, and Mo does too, and I hate to see her have to endure it.

But there's this really gorgeous phlebotomist who works there. Seen her a couple of times, alabaster complexion, Amazonian height, basically one fine looking medical worker.

I know, dear reader, you can tell I haven't been on nearly enough dates lately.

But it never seems like the time to try and chat a girl up, when I'm there for my daughter, not to mention in front of my ex-wife. So I register that the needle ghoul is good enough to eat, but I do nothing about it.

But as if the ER fates didn't want me to want for goddesses, we get an ER nurse to make me want to turn hypochondriac.