Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Something New in the Health Drama

Well...our week was eventful...certainly not boring. Last Tuesday seemed to be a normal day full of me reporting to multiple friends and family members as to the continuing improvement and amazing health Kiera has been having, especially with her full days spent on the HME with O2 tubing and only using the ventilator at night.

Sooo...since good old Murphy's Law seems to like my house, we had a NEW development. Tuesday night (Wed AM) at 12:03 Kiera started having a complex partial seizure with no fever! It lasted 30 minutes! While she has had 2 febrial (fever induced) seizures in the last 4 years, this is her first seizure with no apparent stimulus. She did, however, have an unnoticed ear infection which was diagnosed when we got to the hospital, and after the CT scan, spinal tap, EEG, and MRI, the ear infection seems to be the only possible cause of the seizure. The ambulance took over 15 minutes to arrive (which I think was due to dispatch mistakenly leaving out the urgency of "4yr old on a ventilator having a seizure." ) So maybe the duration would have been shorter if she had gotten the anti-seizure meds about 10 minutes earlier. I am a teensy bit perturbed about that. Even though she came home Thursday, we are still waiting on the prior-auth on her PRN anti-seizure med so we can get it filled. Worst case, we'll have to call 911 again if we don't have any.

The whole thing left us pretty wiped out. It felt like we were caught looking...like the last 4 years of drama was still a honeymoon period that we didn't know we were enjoying. Luckily, my sister was awake and monitoring Kiera when Kiera's seizure began so we had 911 on the phone within 2 minutes. I'm not really sure we would have noticed it as quickly (if at all) if we had been on duty and sleeping like we do when we don't having nursing coverage. I think we may have to start bringing in the poodles on non-nurse nights and see if they will alert us if something happens. Good thing I have smart dogs, despite some lady's know it all comment on my blog a while back. :)

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