Complex, but fine.

Febrile seizures come in two funsize varieties: simple and complex.

At the beginning of the month, Olivia had two febrile seizures.  Simple, as we know now.  Even though anyone who witnesses a febrile seizure will tell you that it appears to be anything but simple.  Scary is more appropriate.

Febrile seizures are caused by fever.  Or, temperature, I guess.  Not necessarily how high, but how fast the temperature goes up.  It can happen at 100 degrees as easily as 104.  It all just depends on how fast the fever spikes.  A baby can have a febrile seizure and have a temperature of 101, if it spikes quickly from, say, 98 degrees.

Take Wednesday, for example. 

Olivia was happy as can be all morning.  She went to the sitter.  She played, ate, napped, and just generally made everyone cheerful.  As per usual.  From what I hear, she was happly playing with her friend Addison until she fell over onto her side and had a damn seizure.

I mean, it never seems OK to type that.  It doesn't seem OK to read it.  It definitely doesn't feel good to live it.

So Olivia had a seizure, and it lasted 3-4 minutes.  The sitter was fabulous in every way, and had to endure the entire ordeal and call 911 and everything.  When the paramedics arrived, Olivia stopped seizing but was still unresponsive and limp. 

To the emergency room, Jeeves!

I had just sat down at Panera and opened my laptop to finish up another Fan Page Friday post when I got the call.  I was 45 minutes from home, but I drove so fast that I got to the hospital shortly after Olivia.

What I saw was...well, quite literally complex.  A complex febrile seizure.

A simple febrile seizure happens once a day, lasts less than 5 minutes, and involves both sides of the body.  A complex febrile seizure involves more than one seizure per day, lasts more than five minutes, and may only involve one or both sides of the body.

Olivia was laying on the bed getting an IV.  Her entire body was shaking.  She didn't seem to notice me or hear me.  She was drooling.  She was grunting and her breathing was uneven.  Her heart was racing.  Her eyes and face twitched in rhythm with her entire body.

This went on for 8-10 minutes.  8-10 infuriating, panicky, horrible awful no good very bad minutes. 

Finally, they decided that she was not going to come out of it on her own, and they gave her Ativan.  She went still and fell asleep.  We were transferred to the Children's hospital to be admitted.

Long story short, she stayed over night, had an EEG and a CT scan - both normal - and we are home and fine.  Maybe I'll write more about it later, but right now I'm exhausted of my own complaints and just want to play with Olivia and watch chick flicks all day. 

After that first night, I snapped this picture of Olivia in her hospital baby jail:

That look of annoyance is not from a fever or seizure, but because the only cartoon I could find was Spongebob Squarepants.  And he's an asshole, which is apparent to even a baybee.

And here is Olivia today, tearing up the kitchen and sucking on some paprika while taking the skankiest smelling dump, evah:

Here's to January, kissing the fattest part of my ass. 

I didn't proof read this post, so hopefully it makes sense.

(I feel the need to tell you that I stole the whole "fattest part of my ass" thing from Jen Lancaster.)