...and they suck.
Tiffany and I are sitting down to potentially the last lunch we will have together for a long time as she is moving away. I hear a guttural sound on the monitor and I know something is wrong. It was a tiny sound that sent me running up to Ellie's room where she is having her nap.
She has thrown up on the bed. She is all wet. Tiffany comes up to see Ellie. She is one of Ellie's best friends as well as mine. Tiffany is an RN.
I get Ellie out of her wet shirt. She is very floppy. Not holding her head up at all. I think it is because she is so tired from being up between 2 and 6 am last night. I get her into a clean shirt, remove the soiled pillow, replace it with a new one and put Ellie down on it. She is silent.
For one split second she recognizes Tiffany who is one of her favorite people. A flicker of recognition passes on her face and she smiles a small smile. Then she looks at me. Her eyes dart to the left. The smile freezes. I say, "Ellie, say hello to your Tiffy!" She is looking at me. It looks like that should hurt her eyes to be that far to the left eventhough I am sitting to her left.
I pick her up and put her on my left knee because then she will have to look Right to see me. Her eyes don't move. Tiffany says, "She's having a seizure, put her on her side." I do and then we get the emergency diastate and give her a dose. She vomits. She is still seizing, floppy, eyes twitching and still deviated to the left. Then her breathing is choked sounding. I call 911 yelling back to Tiffany, "You know CPR, Right?!"
Tiffany rubs Ellie's back, listens to her heartbeat, counts her pulse and times her seizure. It's great being friends with a nurse - especially at times like this. I am trying not to cry. The tears are there in my eyes, hot and stinging.
The ambulance crew and fire team come just as the seizure stops and Ellie puts her thumb in her mouth and wants to go to sleep. A good sign. Post ictal - the brain reoranizing after the storm.
There's and ambulance and fire truck on our tiny street. They give her oxygen though her color is good. They take down the details. They pack us onto the ambulance and rush us to children's. Kerry the EMT gets the IV in - no small feat on Ellie's tattered preemie veins. Ellie is still out of it and satting at 85. More oxygen and quick conversation about giving her more diastat. Then her sats rise. She wasn't dusky but very ice white with bright red cheeks. I didn't know that satting at 85 could look like that.
The driver uses the siren on and off because I tell him about her auditory defensiveness. The closer we get to the hospital the more Ellie is coming out of it. I am there with her. They let me sit by her. I am telling her she is a brave girl and that she will get to rest soon. We get to Children's Hospital, Tiffany is there, dada is there. They do a scan. Her ventricles are fine - no surgery today for anxious surgical interns. Her depakane level is 72. 3 points less than it was a month ago - still in the therapeutic range.
7 hours and after telling 10 people our whole bloody history to current status we are home on a new med regime and Ellie wants her videos, food and to play with her toys. Mama wants to have a good long cry.
