Aydan has come down with a horrid cold today, we have lots of snot and a rattly chest. I thought something might be amiss as he actually slept through the night last night!!
We went out for the day, but he spent most of the day asleep, I figured he obviously needed it, so left him to it.
By late afternoon I noticed that his breathing had become very rapid, around 60 breaths a minute, so I rang up the children's ward. They told me that I only had open access for his epilepsy, and that I couldn't really bring him in for that, but I managed to convince them to see him.
Whilst we were there a doctor examined him and we were told that he had an ear infection in both ears, and a chest infection!! They wanted to start him on a nebuliser right away. Well, he absolutely HATED that! it took 2 of us to pin him down so that he would have it. I tell you, he might only be small, but boy is he strong!!!
It was decided that he was to have a nebuliser every half an hour until his chest started to sound better.
During his 2nd nebuliser he was very quiet, just lay there and let the nurse put the mask over him, I figured he was very tired and still feeling really poorly, so after he had finished I ask where the loo was so I could prepare for a long night of having to help with the nebulisers.
On my return I noticed that something wasn't quite right with him, I went over to him and called his name to check that he wasn't having an absent seizure, as I went over his eyes rolled into the back of his head so I pressed the nurse call button.
When the nurse arrived his whole body had started to convulse, I realised that he was having one of the bad seizures, also known as a tonic clonic seizure (aka gran mal) I realised at this point that anything over 3 minutes was bad, and it had already been more than that!!
The nurse with me pulled the emergency call button and the room was suddenly filled with doctors and nurses, and this is where things start to get a bit sketchy with details, as it all blurred into one long nightmare :0(
The first thing they did was to give him some oxygen via a mask and gave him a dose of midazolam in the side of his cheek (his mouth) they also gave him a paracetamol pessary in his bottom, while trying to get some blood samples from his toes, and putting a cannula in his right hand, the seizure had now been going on for around 20 minutes... They injected diazepam 3.9mg into his cannula, and Aydan started foaming at the mouth.
I was still talking to him and holding his hand/stroking his hair all the way through, I was absolutely terrified, but I managed to keep it all together for little man!
Aydan still wasn't coming round from his seizure, and by this point I had noticed that there was a crash team stood at the back of the room, and a woman in scrubs with a bag full of medical equipment!! :-O some doctor came rushing in saying that his blood gas was showing at 6.9, I have no idea what this meant, but knew it wasn't good.
The next medicine to arrive was something called paraldehyde, which they injected up his bottom, he did a trump and some of it came back out, but whatever it was seemed to work as he started coming around from his seizure! His seizure ended up lasting from between 40-50 minutes :0(
Another frightening thing though was that even though his seizure had finished, his eyes were still all over the place, the only way I can describe this is to compare him to how you would think of a mentally disabled child, I'm not sure if that is the politically correct term, so I'm sorry if I offend anyone, as it is not intended to offend! But that was how he looked, and a part of me thought that the seizure had done something to his brain.
For the next couple of hours Aydan's eyes remained like this and he just kept chewing everything that came near his mouth. I believe this is because of the drugs they gave him.
They also injected him with steroids and an antibiotic whilst we were waiting for the blood results to come back.
Aydan eventually dropped off to sleep and they put him in an oxygen box over night, with the regular nebulisers.
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