First, Last, and Only

On Monday, we had some firsts that I sincerely pray will be the first, last, and only time our family has to experience any of these things!

First call to 911
First ride in an ambulance
Sabrina's first trip to the ER
Sabrina's first...and second IV
Sabrina's first MRI

The kid's and I were in Oklahoma for the past week visiting my family. On Monday we had gone to Tulsa to get haircuts and visit with some of our friend's from Broken Arrow. On the way back, I had been talking on the phone to Mike and was just saying good-bye as I drove into town when I looked in the rear view mirror and noticed that Sabrina had massive amounts of foamy slobber dripping down the sides of her mouth all over her shirt. I was confused and said "Sabrina, why are you so slobbery?" but she didn't respond at all. Then I started saying her name over and over again getting louder and louder with still no response, no movement or anything. I quickly pulled over into a grocery store parking lot and hopped out of the car and when I got back to her I noticed her arm jerking over and over again and I knew she was having a seizure. So I called 911. And the ambulance came and she was still seizing. And they took her out of the car and laid her on a gurney and they said she was still seizing. I had been on the phone with Mike and he knew I was calling 911 so he had called my mom and told her she needed to go find me to help with the other kid's so she showed up not long after the ambulance. I rode in the ambulance to the hospital and that was seriously the worst few minutes of my life. I was in the front so I couldn't see her and I didn't know what was going on. They gave her a bunch of Valium to stop the seizure and by the time they were taking her out of the ambulance at the ER she was starting to cry and I was so relieved. She was very confused and drugged and cried for quite a while. At first I couldn't understand what she was trying to say but then I realized she was saying over and over again "I want you to hold me mama" even when I was holding her. So sad! Her temperature was 100.4 in the ER and they diagnosed it as a febrile seizure. The crazy thing is that she had been acting fine all day, I had no idea she was sick. So after running a bunch of tests (which all came back normal, not even an elevated WBC count) and spending several hours in the ER, they sent us home. And by the time we left she was acting totally normal again, still nothing to indicate that she was sick. Mike, who was home in Manhattan, left while we were still in the ER and drove down to be with us.

Grandpa Jeff holding Sabrina right before they sent us home. You can see the 2 IV's in her left arm. She did not even cry when they took them out, including when they were pulling off all the tape which looked like it would hurt.

On Tuesday afternoon before we left to come home, we took Sabrina in for a Brain MRI which also was normal. She was SO good during the MRI it was ridiculous. You have to lay perfectly still for those things a lot longer than I ever realized. She slept through at least half of it but laid perfectly still for the other half. So on the way back to Grandma's house we stopped at Braum's and she had a scoop of strawberry ice cream in a cone. She ate every last bit of that ice cream cone.


Tender mercies/blessings/miracles -

• My cell phone was not working on Monday. Jilly had been playing with it that morning and it was unusable all day. Except for the drive home from Tulsa, it all of a sudden started working and continued to work until I sent Mike a text message from the ambulance telling him that Sabrina's seizure had stopped. Then it quit working and hasn't worked since.
• We were in town when it happened, not on the road between Tulsa and Bartlesville.
• We were literally a 3 minute drive from my parent's house so my mom and sister got there shortly after the ambulance. I didn't have to worry about my other kid's at all. Which was especially comforting since I think I scared Benson and Grace to death with my reaction.
• My dad was on his way home from work when it happened and arrived at the ER before we did. It made me feel better knowing that he was there.
• Because we were in Bartlesville, my Uncle Ryan who is a doctor was there with us in the ER which was so comforting because I knew he would make sure they took good care of Sabrina.

We are so grateful that Sabrina is ok, that nothing more serious was wrong, and we are especially grateful for the help and blessings that we received. We sincerely hope that this will be a first, last, and only experience of this kind!!