Febrile Seizure, a new term I just learned

On Saturday night, Costa became very fevery. I gave him Tylenol for his fever and put him to bed. About a half an hour later I hear him cry out for me… “Mama! Maaamaaa!” but I’m busy nursing the baby. I plan to check on him when I’m done and hope he will go back to sleep in the mean time. I’m in the middle of a soothing episode of Friends. Phoebe is running through Central Park all crazy armed and wide-eyed. It reminds me of watching first graders play soccer. Scott is taking a shower and all seems relatively normal even though we still haven’t totally adjusted to being this gigantic family of six.

Minutes later I hear the most sickening sound I’ve ever heard of a small body thumping to the floor. Before I even get to him, I know Costa’s fallen from the top of his bunkbed ladder. I shout for Scott and frantically put the baby down. We run from our room and find him on his back on the floor. “He’s shaking” Scott says. From the fever, I assume. But we turn the lights on and see his eyes rolling back in his head and his arms flailing uncontrollably. Scott shouts for me to call 9-1-1. I’m quick, but hysterical, the hardwood floor like in ice-rink under my socked feet. I can hardly unlock my phone. After what feels like a lifetime, I’m holding Costa on the couch as he begins breathing more steadily, but he is staring blankly at the ceiling like a ventriloquist dummy. He doesn’t respond to anything I say. He seems like a frozen version of the person I love. I rub his chest as if it could thaw him out. The paramedics arrive, their warm faces like the moon in our living room, and we load into the ambulance. They ask for his carseat to place on the stretcher. I can’t even take this detail.

One minute, I’m nursing a newborn and watching tv, the next I’m in an ambulance harness with my two year old watching our town disappear into the night behind us. My son is there and yet he’s miles away in a place I’ve never been. Everything he knows up until this point is something I’ve watched him learn or explained to him and now he’s on his own in this undefined place, trying so courageously to make his way through. All I can do is watch in horror, hold his hand, fake-smile and point things out on the ambulance ride like this is just another crazy adventure. “Is he brain dead!?” I wonder out loud. The paramedics assure me it’s most likely a febrile seizure and he’ll come out of it soon.

We get to the hospital and they cart the stretcher with his little carseat into the trauma unit. The paramedics carry in my nonsensical assortment of things- a breast pump, a sweater, a stuffed sea turtle and a very loved blanket. These items stand out like sore thumbs in this sterile place.

A social worker distracts me as they take Costa into a bright room filled with medical professionals. They don’t trust the parents to look at the IVs poking their babies, at the pediatric neck brace being put on and the many doctors assembling around their mute toddler. I’m worried the social worker is going to uncover all my terrible faults as a mother. “Who lets a sick two year old sleep five feet above a wood floor? Who doesn’t run when he calls?!…” Of course, she says none of this and is so kind I consider sobbing into her lap, pulled to it by the gravity of grief and gratitude.

I can’t imagine how this will end. The only good options seem buried beneath a hundred terrible options that will change our lives as we know them. And worst of all, it isn’t within my ability to uncover them. I have to trust in all these humans. These brave, incredible, saintly humans who walk through these haunting doors each day to an assortment of traumas that have happened to the most vulnerable population.

They need to take Costa for a CT scan. They let me follow. I feel dead inside and yet, here we are at an elevator and I’m wondering what the etiquette is. Do I go in first or do I let them?

They make me wait outside of the CT scan because of the radiation. I’m in a long, cold hallway with paintings of bunnies flying airplanes on the walls. It’s quiet and all I can think to do is fall to my knees and pray at the window looking out over the ER. A hospital worker walks past me and I wonder if he is even phased by such a tragic sight. I’m reminded of the mother from Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, after her donkey-son accidentally turns himself into a rock and she is staring out the window with tears streaming down her face wondering what has become of her son.

Next we’re back in the trauma room. It’s like a surreal circus here. Babies are crying down the hall, therapy dogs are walking past, people are asking me what size diaper my son wears. They’ve nicknamed him “Sea Lion” until he’s been officially admitted. For example, “Sea Lion needs to get his collar cleared” they say in reference to the neck brace. The CT scan shows no breaks or fractures. There also isn’t any sign of brain trauma or bleeding. I feel too lucky for words. They allow me to climb into his hospital bed and lie next to him. This warm body, this beautiful light of a child.

We’re transferred up to a room on another floor. We walk past a playground and I can hardly look. How nice, I think at first. How tragic.

Around 2am Scott arrives after my parents relieve him at our house. Around 3am Costa rips his IV out. They have to replace it and he is bereft, but shouts one of the best sentences I’ve ever heard, “Mama take it off!” My son. My son! My heart outside my body. Our brave boy. Our Sea Lion.

The night passes somehow and the day arrives. Although, if you’ve ever spent any time in a hospital you know they mostly feel like the same thing. The neurologists come just as we’ve fallen asleep. Having been in a hospital a mere 5 weeks earlier to deliver Holli, I am aware of this phenomenon. Just as you finally find the will to dismiss your thoughts and let down your guard and sleep, someone arrives to ask you some very complex or very mundane questions such as “Where would you like the birth certificate delivered?” or “Does anyone in your family have a history of neurological disorders?”

However, this time they come bearing the best possible news. All signs point to a febrile seizure caused by a quick rising fever. They are somewhat common. He will likely never have one again and by the age of five will be past the age to experience them. There was really nothing I could have done to stop it. It was an unlucky combination that he was descending his bunk bed ladder at the time of the seizure. We did everything we could and I am not, after all, The-Worst-Mother-Ever. He has a sinus infection and will go on antibiotics. We can go home shortly.

I carry Costa down the quiet hallways past hospital cribs that split my heart in two. It feels like gloating to be walking towards the exit with a healthy kid. I do not take it for granted; how fragile these small people are, how fragile all of this is.

I am so worn out from all the fear. And so thankful for our answered prayers. And I am so exhausted. I am teary over my sister-in-law sending food and simple texts from friends saying “Wish we could give you a hug.” Years have been added to Costa’s life, and also to mine and Scott’s. 37 seems like a gross under-estimation of how old we feel after the past few weeks.

Finally, we are home watching the rising chests of our sleeping babies. I feel like it’s the first time I can take a deep breath in days.

Parenthood. I write in my phone notes, as if there’s any way to define it. Parenthood: what if I didn’t do anything wrong and it was just hard?

If only I would have been warned how overwhelming it is to love so deeply, knowing full-well that I wouldn’t have made any other choice. ▉