Halloween 2011

The second scariest day of my life. After nine years, I cannot remember the day or month, but very clear in my head are the feelings. Mary had her first seizure when she was 2, her second on Halloween 2011. This date, I believe, will stick in my head.

Mary had a grand mal seizure during class yesterday. I had just returned from the grocery store, and was busy trying to get my house in order after being away for a few days. Someone from the school called me from her cell phone, to tell me Mary was having a seizure "right now". My heart fell into my stomach. I dropped the phone and jumped in my car, and was there in 3 minutes. Thank God I was home and we live so close. When I arrived, Mary was not seizing, but she was in a dazed state, which is typical afterwards. My entire body was shaking, my heart was pounding, my brain was zooming. Then I saw Mary, I got down on the floor with her and all those feelings left. I was calm, my Mom mode stepped in, and all I wanted to do was hold her, touch her, just be with her.

911 was called, and arrived shortly after I did. When my husband arrived, I was so thankful, he is always level headed and can think straight, even when he is clearly worried. I knew we probably didn't need to go to the hospital, and was surprised at myself for questioning the paramedics. They of course, highly recommended we go of course. If we took her home and she had another one, there could be complications, blah, blah, blah. Of course for the school, it is also a concern. Everybody is afraid of lawsuits, and it is so sad that it has to be that way. At this point Mary is alert and very scared, and very exhausted. Thankfully the fatigue helped keep her calm. They let me ride in the ambulance with her, and we were at the hospital in minutes.

We were in a room and within minutes, the first person to come in was the business person, looking for our insurance card, and ready to collect our copay of $250. Nice. Mary was checked over by 2 Dr.'s. Nothing was done, since she is already being treated for a seizure disorder, they saw no need to do blood work and all that. Thank God! We were out of there by 2:30. Halloween was on again! Mary was going to be "cool" Sandy from Grease.

We don't know what or why she had the seizure, it's been 9 years. A few weeks ago, we increased Mary's medication for her OCD and anxiety. One of the side effects is seizures, I knew this, so does the doctor, but the chances seemed to be slim. I suspect the increase was too much for her, so we will be tapering off and stopping that immediately. I don't care what the dr says. This medicine is not making such a huge difference that I want to ever experience this again. Of course I don't know if this is the cause, but why chance it? The neurologist is going to increase her seizure meds. Fine, the more the better.

I spent the rest of the day like everything was normal, I held it together through the day and into the evening. For some reason, I thought consuming an entire bottle of wine throughout the evening was a good idea. It was happy trick or treating time. By the time it was all over, and everyone was cleaned up and put to bed, I broke. I would not recommend ending a particularly stressful day polishing off an entire bottle of wine. I was a babbling lunatic. I guess it all just got to me. All of a sudden I'm replaying the events of the day over and over in my head. I knew there was a possibility of this happening, but after so long, just kind of forgot about it.

This morning, everything is back to normal. Mary was anxious to get back to school to let her friends know she is alright. When I had to go back to get my car at school yesterday, it was dismissal time. I stopped inside to let everybody know she was fine. Mary's friends all came up to her, gave her a hug and asked her if she was o.k. I know it was a scary thing for the kids to see. Even the boy she was having problems with asked her if she was o.k. This morning all she did was talk about how worried everybody must be. That's my Mary, in a rush to get to school to reassure everyone. Plus, I think she like the attention.