Hospital Stay Round 3

July 2011
I know that I have been a bad blogger lately and I apologize for that. Between EMT class, work and the kids I haven't had much time to sleep, never mind blog! As you can tell by the title of this post, my poor baby had to endure yet another hospital stay. Forth of July weekend started off great! We spent a day at the bay with our friends and attended a great neighborhood cookout where the kids played their little hearts out for hours. On July 4th Isabel woke up with hives all over her body. While Brian and I were looking at them, she had a seizure. With the combination of the hives and the seizure I decided to take her to the closest ER. When we arrived, they hooked her up to a pulse ox (97%) and listened to her breathe sounds. They gave us a prescription for benedryl and sent us on our way seeing that she has epilepsy and has had seizures before. We were in and out in about 10 minutes. After we arrived home, she had two more seizures that got progressively worse. At this point I called the on-call neurologist who told us to come into the Children's Hospital. When we arrived, while we were in the triage room, she has another seizure which allowed us to get right back into a room (good timing Isabel!). While we were in the ER, she had four more seizures despite the bolus IV doses of seizure meds that she was receiving. Her pulse ox was dropping into the 40s and it seemed that each seizure was lasting a bit longer.

Thankfully they decided to admit her. When we got up to her room, she had two more seizures and these were the worse by far. Her pulse ox dropped to 4 (it's supposed to be 96-100) she was completely limp and blue and she was not coming out of them. They had to push the staff assist button and start bagging her. It was by far the scariest experience of my life. I somehow knew that she was going to be alright but having the knowledge that I have now, having to use a BVM is NOT a good thing. Shortly after these seizures the neurologist came in and thankfully Isabel had another seizure right in front of him. While she was seizing he checked her pulse and listened to her heart to rule out cardio problems and thankfully her heart seems just fine (wonderful news)! Thankfully he ordered a new seizure med called Dilantin. After they pushed that, her seizures stopped...but her hives got SO much  worse.

They think that she is allergic to the medicine, but hey I'll take worsening hives over seizures any day! They next day they did another EEG, which of course was clear. The hives worsened and she developed a fever.

They believe that she initially had a virus which brought on the hives. Since she has epilepsy she is weak already, so anytime that she gets sick she has a chance of getting breakthrough seizures and that is what happened in this case. The fever also came from the virus. Thankfully on day 3 the hives and fever began to subside and we finally got to go home!

I give my baby girl so much credit. She has been through so much already and she continues to be so strong and so sweet. We continue to watch her very closely and in the days that have followed she has been very tired which we believe is from her being overmedicated. She still has her happy, loving and spunky personality and that's all I care about!