I gave a lot of thought as to whether I should make a post about this and then came to the conclusion: why not?!? This is a major thing that happened in our lives; it was scary and traumatic for everyone involved; apparently it's much more common than one would realize.
So... Owen, Grace, and I usually go to Paramount Terrace Elementary to eat lunch with Kaden every Friday. On this particular Friday in October, the health-aide stopped me in the office and gave me a heads-up that Kaden had visited her office late morning saying that he didn't feel well.
(Weird... he usually doesn't complain much about feeling sick.)
She felt his forehead and took his temperature and the reading was well within the "normal" range. My thoughts were that if he didn't have a fever, surely he could make it a few more hours until the weekend.
Around 3:10, as I was getting into the car to drive to school, I noticed that I had missed 3 calls from the school within the past 5 minutes. As I pulled up to the school, Mrs. Johnson pointed to me and quickly jogged over to my car. Confused, I rolled the window down only to hear her urgently say, "Kaden fell... you need to get inside right now."
Mind you, I had Owen and Grace in the back seat and I slightly felt like I was in a dream state.
Her next statement was, "I'll watch Owen and Grace if that's ok..."
So I ran into the building...
... to find Kaden curled up on the classroom floor, surrounded by 4 different teachers/aides.
According to Mrs. Kepley they were watching a video the last 30 minutes of the day when Kaden slumped out of his seat onto the floor and proceeded to have a grand-mal seizure on the floor. He started drooling and banging his head on the hard floor, to which she rushed over and held his head to prevent him from hurting himself.
Meanwhile the teachers were talking to him, asking questions, and trying to keep him awake because that what they were told to do when they called 911.
***As she was explaining the situation I was still completely calm, as if in a dream state; I was hearing her but was so confused.
I held everything together and was fine until I heard the health aide talk to Kaden about his siblings outside and then asked him to remind her of their names. She asked him to tell her his sister's name twice and on the third time Kaden gave her a blank stare, which turned to confusion/exaperation when he finally stated, "I don't know..."
That was the moment when everything clicked and I started panicking.
Soon after the paramedics came in the classroom and started evaluating Kaden.
They had him touch is nose, asked him his name and birthday and several other things to which I can't remember. After several minutes they asked whether I they should drive him to the hospital or I could do it myself.
I called Ben, trying to stay calm, not alarm him too much yet express the gravity of the situation to get him to drive home from Boys Ranch that minute... yet not have him panic too much on the 40-minute drive into town.
Ben quickly realized the severity of the situation as he went to get Kaden out of the car at the hospital and Kaden couldn't quite recall Ben's name...
LUCKY for us our friend, Nathin, was working at Northwest ER that day and had a room ready for us as soon as we arrived.
Kaden getting his CT scan
After spending several dazed hours in the hospital, the doctors didn't see anything from the scan or find anything unusual from his blood work or urine analysis. They came to the conclusion that we should just go home and get a good nights' rest.
I slept in the bed next to Kaden that night and the next morning he seemed 100% normal.
He talked to his aunt Dorothy and it was interesting to hear him recount the previous day. In his mind, he didn't feel all that well at school and by the end of the day he was just "so tired that he fell asleep and during that sleep he fell out of his chair and onto the floor..."
And that's about all he remembered.
After talking to our pediatrician we went ahead and scheduled a sleep-deprived EEG.
I was instructed to keep Kaden up as late as possible and then wake him by 4 AM.
I really do you have the best friends.
Joyce and Laura both set their alarms to meet us at the waffle house by 4:30 AM.
Kaden was SO TIRED and he's really NOT a fun person to be around when he hasn't had enough sleep. (Are any of us?)
meanwhile... Grace passed out in our bed when we returned home at 5:30 AM
Back at Northwest hospital, all of the electrodes in place with Kaden ready for his EEG.
As it turned out, Kaden's EEG was sent to Cook's hospital in Fort Worth. From there, an expert read the scans and everything looked "normal".
Our pediatrician, Dr. Fletcher, assured us that seizures are much more common than one would think. Apparently one in eight people experience a seizure in their lifetime, with a big proportion coming from children under the age of two.
So between his assurances and talking to Dorothy via FaceTime, we are crossing our fingers and hoping this was his one glitch and that we won't have to worry about it again.
