A trip to the ER.......

A seizure is a temporary abnormal electro-physiologic phenomenon of the brain, resulting in abnormal synchronization of electrical neuronal activity. It can manifest as an alteration in mental state, tonic or clonic movements, convulsions, and various other psychic symptoms (such as déjà vu or jamais vu). It is caused by a temporary abnormal electrical activity of a group of brain cells. The medical syndrome of recurrent, unprovoked seizures is termed epilepsy, but some seizures may occur in people who do not have epilepsy.

The treatment of epilepsy is a subspecialty of neurology; the study of seizures is part of neuroscience. Doctors who specialize in epilepsy are epileptologists; doctors who specialize in the treatment of children with epilepsy are pediatric epileptologists

I started typing the events of Thursday and found this woud be a VERY long blog, so I'm gonna stick with the facts. Many of you may know, on Thursday morning while at school, Sarah experienced a Grand Mal Seizure. Due to school policy, 911 was called and she was Life Flighted into Cooks Children's Hopsital ER in Ft. Worth. Tom (godfather) met me there and we stayed with Sarah during her evaluation and monitoring of vitals. In the meantime, ALL of my awesome girlfriends, gathered their resources and made arrangements for Erin and Taylor to be picked up from school that afternoon.
Sarah checked out fine at the ER, no internal bleeding, no swelling, no "damage", but since she did have a seizure a year ago (May 7, 2007) it was decided to start her on seizure medication. Unfortunately, these meds need to build up in her system for at least a week to be effective. We were discharged at noon and headed home. We picked up the kids from school, and headed over to DF Becky's home. She offered to watch the kids while I went to fill Sarah's prescription. The Dr. advised that Sarah take it easy and to keep an eye on Sarah. Also from last years experience, she was fine after the seizure so I wasn't panicky or clingy to Sarah and felt it would be okay to leave her. (ha, wrong!)
While at Walmart waiting for her meds, we got another phone call. Sarah was seizing again. Otis had called 911 and was waiting for the ambulance and trying to keep the rest of the kids calm. I pulled in, moments behind the ambulance. This seizure also was a Grand Mal and lasted longer than that mornings. So, Becky sprung into action again, Jennifer would pick up E & T, Becky would follow the ambulance, and I called Tom to have him grab Sarah's blankie.
This time in the ER it was decided that Sarah would stay overnight in the Children's Observation Ward. It's a new part of the hospital for children who need to be observed but don't need to be in the ER, or for children who live a great distance away and trips back and forth to the ER were plain senseless. Sarah's neurologist was notified and a different med would be administered. Sarah was behaving fine and by the time we reached our room, she was pretty much bouncing off the walls. (Sick child??) Becky headed home, Staci arrived and Tom continued to hang out. The time finally came for Staci & Tom to head back to their homes and for us to settle in for the night. Once Sarah was asleep, she was hooked up to monitors and the beeps and bells commenced.
Friday we spent hanging out, being observed, vitals recorded, questions asked, we asking questions and finally visited by Dr. MacGothlin. (awesome dr. by the way) He spend a good hour with us, explaining, answering questions and defining a game plan on how to help Sarah. She'll be "labeled" as Epiliptic for the time being and will take anti-seizure meds. We'll continue with regular visits to Dr. "Mac" for monitoring and evaluations. Probably having another EEG and MRI in the future to check on her cyst.
We were also visited by the on call Pyscologist to address Sarah's behavoir issues (our awesome Charge Nurse, used the ER visit as a back door to make Tricare cover this little visit!) Granted it was only an hour long visit, she provided insight, knowledge and guidance in a huge way. She really stressed that Sarah needed long term evaluation, because in a short term setting Sarah appears ADD, but truely believes there is a deeper under lying problem that needs to be addressed. Understanding I don't want to make Sarah a guinie pig with meds, she explained that by temporarily treating some symptons might allow us to get deeper to the actual problem. I had never looked at it from that angle and it made sense.
We were discharged at 5:00 pm Friday night. We filled her prescriptions, gathered some groceries and headed home. It was a good night, having all my children together and everything was good, peaceful and uneventful again. (for now)
I'm sure many are wondering, what about David?? He was beside himself with worry, guilt, anger, frustration, a feeling of helplessness, feeling useless and stircrazy. His supervisors finally made the decision for him on Friday. VR-53 is flying down on Monday to pick-up the Wing for weeklong inspection in D.C. David will be on that flight and will remain here until Friday when they return with the Wing. He'll hug his kids like crazy while here, we'll be visiting a Tri-Care rep, probably visit with Sarah's Dr's. and give huge hugs to everyone who supported us in his absence.
I will be thanking each and everyone who called, texted, and emailed their love, thoughts and prayers. You never wish for these circumstances in life, but it was a huge relief knowing my friends would (and did) step up and take care of life for me and the kids. David is in awe of you and so grateful for our friendships.
Thank you to everyone. Words don't come close to expressing my thoughts or feelings, even though I'll continue to try to show it. Sarah is doing well and quite frankly, today you can't even tell anything even happened to her. She's already fighting with her sister and pushing my buttons! I, too, am okay, my emotions are stretched a bit thin, but I'm good. No mental break downs on the horizon or anything like that. I'm not much of a wigger, I pull into myself and let logic take over. When the crisis is over, I might then crumble a little bit, but usually after my heart catches up with my head. But I've been getting alot of hug therapy and the big dose will arrive on Monday...so I'm good.
Last but not least...Taylor and Erin. They are doing well and handling all of this pretty well. We'll be learning how to react if Sarah has more seizures, what to do and such. It was very frightening for them to witness one of Sarah's seizures. But after they learned that Sarah wasn't in any pain during these times, it helped releive some stress. Erin has visited the school counsler, since having a helicopter land in your playground is pretty tramatic and exciting but then learning it was your sister being picked up is very scarey. Taylor and I having been talking alot and he's doing okay too.
It's time to sign off for now. We'll keep everyone posted on Sarah's status.
I'm gonna go plug in my poor phone, battery is about dead again......