Amelia woke up with a high fever on Thursday morning. I was working from home that day, so I decided to take her into the local clinic to have her checked out. We’d never been to the local clinic, so it was a bit of a trial to get in. Once we got in, we saw the nurse practicioner. She said Amelia had a lot of wax in one ear, and the other ear could be red. Then she said her throat looked red too. They ended up giving her a shot of rocephin (an antibiotic) and sending her home with instructions to take Motrin and Tylenol. We did that throughout the day, but she didn’t seem to get any better. Her temperature would shoot up to 102 or 103 about 3 hours after the medicine, so she’d wake up from any nap and be severely irritable. She wouldn’t sleep at all because she’s too hot – so she was up pretty much all day.
I finally got her to sleep at midnight Thursday night. When she woke up about 7, she was hot again. I gave her more medicine, and got her back to sleep just before I had to take Katie and Jalynn to music class at 9. She was sleeping pretty well, but I was still worried about the lack of diagnosis of her issue, so I called to see if I could get in to see our regular doctor. He had an opening at 11 when I called at 10:21, so I woke her out of her sleep and sped off to complete the 30 min drive. We made it in time, but we had to wait a while to get in to see the nurse then doctor. She was being very clingy and wouldn’t play with anything. I could feel her getting hotter too, but I wanted to wait to give her her medicine after the nurse checked her temperature. When she did, her temp was 103. We went back into the examination room at 11:20 or so and waited for the doctor. About a minute after we’d been in the room, I got really scared because I was starting to see what was going to happen. I could see her start to fall into her seizure, and she did. As soon as it happend, I laid her on the examination bed and yelled out the door for the nurses and doctor "Help, she’s having a seizure". They all came running in and within 20 seconds the room was filled with 6 nurses and our doctor. They set her up on some oxygen and gave her a shot of diazepam which is a rectal injection that stops seizures. Her seizure stopped in 2.5 minutes and she came to in about 5 minutes total. They kept monitoring her for the next 30-40 minutes as she gradually came to more and more. I called Becky just after the seizure ended and she came from work to get their about noon.
Amelia had a double ear infection so they gave her another shot of rocephin to fight the infection. She continued to have a fever last night and we had trouble getting her to bed. She finally gave in about 11 and Becky got up off and on all night to check on her. Today she woke up without a fever and has been doing well. I would say she finally came back to normal at about 4pm when she woke up from a nap. Since then we’ve been able to see the Amelia that makes us smile.
It’s been a really tough three days having to watch her deal with this fever. I never knew how much someone else’s sickness could take out of me. I can’t remember feeling as much stress for this long of time before. It’s such a great relief to see her back to normal tonight.
She’s now had three ear infections in 6 months, so we have to take her in to the ear, nose and throat doctor so we can evaluate if tubes need to be put in. We are both in favor of it, because while it doesn’t prevent ear infections, it drains the fluid more easily so they don’t get as high of temperatures. Considering her last two ear infections have included febrile seizures, we are for anything that keeps the fevers down. We’ve been given the drug Diastat which can be used to stop seizures, so we have that in our Amelia’s medicine kit which we will take with us wherever we go from now until she can drive. Amelia will also be having an EEG to see if there is anything abnormal going on in her brain that is impacting these seizures. The doctors are convinced there isn’t, but they said after two seizures we should check to be sure. The doctor said during his 25 years he’s had many kids have seizures in his arms and they’ve all turned out fine. Well, I’m not a doctor and I’ve had two seziures occur in my arms, and that tells me I’m sure not cut out for that line of work.
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