Life is tough

I was on Ericka's e-mail list for some reason. I'm assuming some got the following message but perhaps not all. But as for the lack of participation at the site recently here is an example that would explain why Jean, for one, has had much bigger things on her mind. If the siblings are all aware this will at least make sure any nieces and nephews "peaking in" will know what happened. Ericka wrote. . .


Hello. This is being mailed to several people at once so if there is something that doesn’t make sense to you that may be why.

I haven’t told you about the terrible yet wonderful week I’ve had so far. Monday morning Rhiannyn woke up late with a fever of 101 and I watched her decline throughout the day getting to 103 at nap time. She slept for several hours and I decided that I needed to get her up around five. I went up there and found her laying in her vomit and in a deep seizure. I called my neighbor over to help me and decide what we needed to do. She is a ped. Nurse and part of my small group at church and she lives just three houses over! So she helped me and we had to call 911 because she wasn’t coming out of it. She had been in a seizure for 7-10 mins that we knew of by the time the paramedics arrived. They thought that she probably had stopped, but when we arrived at the hospital around 5:50 they thought that she was probably still in a seizure. (at least 50 mins!!!)

My neighbor took Gwyn for the night while I went to the hospital with Rhi. She didn’t respond to anything. She stopped breathing at the hospital so they intubated her. She was given a CT scan and all her other blood work came back normal. She was moved to pediatric ICU and was very heavily sedated. They tested her for RSV, the Flu, and gave her a spinal tap for menigitus (sp?), and everything came back negative! But they still didn’t really have a reason for the fever.

They kept her intubated and heavily sedated through the night thinking they would give her an MRI at 3 PM on Tuesday and she needed to be sedated for that. They decided not to do the MRI after waiting until 1 PM so she could now be unsedated and extubated. This was scary because they hadn’t seen her try to breath on her own much, but they figured she was just too comfortable to breath more than what the machine was providing for her. After the extubation she did breath on her own well. She was very hoarse and congested and in a lot of pain. She still had a high fever, and was extremely uncomfortable and limp like a noodle. She fought with all the devices connected to her, which actually was a good sign.

She was either fighting sleep or unable to sleep because of her pain and fever all day. Finally, my mom and I (who were staying at the hospital decided to go to sleep at around 11:30 PM and see if just leaving the room would help her settle down. It turns out she was awake talking, kicking, and sitting up all night until around 4 AM! I think her sleep schedule was a bit off!! Wednesday they were suppose to have had her off all her sedation meds so that they could do an EEG to see her brain movements. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been set in stone and so she didn’t have the test. She was able to eat and drink a lot throughout the day. She sat up, talked, pooped, peed, and even wanted to play in the play room a little bit. So the doctors thought she was well enough to go home. So we waited all day to be discharged. Armed with some special anti-seizure meds and an antibiotic they sent us home. They told us that she had a virus and that it wasn’t important to pin point which particular one because there are 1000s. They said that there is a virus that seems to lower the seizure threshold in young children that they have been seeing a lot of in the past couple weeks. So that was presumed to have hit her too.

She’s started to walk a bit today and is still eating well. She is still very weak and pale, but seems to be taking great steps toward full recovery. God was so gracious!!!! I thought that I was seeing the last of my dear child for a couple hours there. But she’s coming around so well!

Have a great blizzard!! Ericka