Matthew has febrile seizures.  Febrile seizures are pretty common among young children.  Febrile seizures are seizures that occur in the presense of fevers in young children between the ages of 6 months to 5 years old.  Most children who are prone to febrile seizures will have 1 in their lifetime.  Matthew had his 1st one in December.  (Remember our ER fisaco?  He went to the ER for the seizure & ended up with heart issues due to an ER mistake.  Thank goodness the heart issues were short-term.)  Some children might have 2 febrile seizures.  A tiny percentage will have more and can lead to developing epilesy.  When a child is experiencing a seziure, they are usually unconscious & not aware of the seizures.  Matthew's febrile seizure he had in December was typical in all aspects.  But his febrile seizures in August were different.  What was different?  He had over a dozen, he knew a seizure was coming on, he was conscious during the seizures & didn't have a fever for half of them.  Just imagine your child becoming agitated because he knew a seizure was coming on.  Then he screams out "Mommy" right before the seizure.  During the seizure he is conscious and screaming in pain.  This is what we woke up to early Saturday morning. 

But let me back track a little.  Matthew did have a fever starting Thursday night.  We began our usual children's motrin routine as soon as we knew he had a fever.  By Friday afternoon, he was complaining about his tummy hurting so I took him to his doctor.  She checked his temperature (only 100.8) and checked for other symptons.  She determined he had the stomach flu.  So told us to go home and keep on doing what we were doing.  Friday night, I decided to sleep in his room.  As I was about to fall asleep, he had his 1st of many febrile seizures.  This seizure was a typical febril seizure and his fever had shot up to 104.  We decided not to go to the ER or call the doctor because there was nothing they could do.  So we stripped him down, put a cool pad on his neck & forehead & religiously gave him motrin every 4-6 hours.  By 6 am, his fever was gone.  But by 9 am, he had his 2nd seizure but this time his seizure was different.  It scared us so we decided to call his doctor to see if they would be willing to see us on a Saturday.  After Hubby twisted their arm a little, they told us to come in.  So we brought him in.

By then Matthew seemed fine and his fever came back but was only about 100.  While waiting for the doctor, he had another seizure.  After his 3rd seizure, we had to bring him to the ER.  (The same ER we went to in December but this time much better.  We were on their 'treat with ultimate care because we almost filed a malpractice lawsuit & the hospital admited their error' list.) And our nightmare continues.  At the ER, he had another seizure while in triage so we were rushed to the back to stablize him.  ER did their usual urine & blood test to rule out a bacterial infection.  (No bacterial infection).  A few hours later, we were given the notice to be discharged since all his test were normal and he did not have a high fever.  As we were being discharged, Matthew had another seizure.  At this point, they would not let us leave and Matthew had to be admitted for additional tests & observations. 

Now there were concerns that his seizures were not febrile seizures but due to something very serious.  He had a CT scan to rule out a brain tumor, brain trama, & any other physical brain deformaties.  Came back normal.  He had a MRI scan to rule out any blood flow issue to the brain & any metabolism issues.  They came back normal.  He had a spinal tap to completely rule out menagitis.  He had passed the preliminary test but now they wanted official confirmation.  It was normal.  He had a EEG scan to rule out epilesy.  Even though he had a seizure during the scan, it turned out normal.  During his 4 days in the hospital, he was put on phenobarbitual to stop the seizures.  Putting him on phenobarb has many nasty side effects ranging from extreme mood swings, hyperness, liver & kidney damage, long term learning development & severe withdrawal symptons.  But he needed to be seizure-free for 24 hours before he could be discharged. 

In the end, what was his diagnosis?  He was discharged with atypical febrile seizures and was required to be on the phenobarb for about a month.  For the next few weeks, it was rough as we dealt with Matthew on meds.  He had extreme mood swings and was HYPER!  We had to super baby proof our place because he was having some balance issues and had lost his sense of caution.  I think the worst was his personality change while on the meds.  He was so detached from us.  Normally Matthew is a very sensitive child and very good had reacting to our feelings.  Now he didn't care.  Hubby & I struggled daily about whether to keep him on his meds.  But we decided to wait until our neurologist follow up.  After a follow up with his neurologist, he confirmed that there were no medical reasons to keep Matthew on the phenobarb.  So we began the weaning process.  

Now Matthew is completely off the phenobarb and back to his typical happy 2-year old self.  (Thank goodness!)   But we are required to give him another anti-seizure med ANYTIME he has a fever to reduce his chances of more seizures.  In the end, we had the best case scenrio and lots of reasons to be thankful.  It could had been cancer, epilesy or something worse but it turned out that he was just very sensitive to frebile seizures.   We are thankful that he wasn't required to stay in PICU during his hospitalization.  (There was another child with eplisey who was in PICU for weeks when Matthew was admitted.)  We are thankful that our nearby hospital had 1 of the 2 only ped floors in LA county.  We are thankful that my parents hadn't left for HK and were close by.  They were able to go back to our home to take care of things, provide the emotional support that Hubby & I needcd, and provided additional familar faces for Matthew during his hospital stay.  We are thankful for the ped floor's staff who were understanding about Matthew's terror of anyone in a white coat.  (He was known as the Crying Baby by the staff.  He screamed bloody murder everytime a stranger walked into our room.  Had the nurses running frantically to our room a few times since he set the alarms off on their monitors.)  Oh heck...we are thankful that I decided to switch to PPO because that gave us the option to follow up with 2nd opinions (if needed) if his disagnois was something more serious.  I'm thankful for the support I received from my FB friends when I was drowning in fear as I watched Matthew go through 1 seizure after another.  I'm thankful for my work & boss who were supportive.  But finally, I'm truely thankful that Matthew is healthy and back to his normal self.  We were ready for significant life changes if Matthew's diagnois was worse but I'm glad that didn't become our reality.  Thank you!

Hubby sent me this link to a youtube video...what a fun wedding!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0

It sorta reminds of our wedding...not as hip but fun.  In order to save $$, we had our reception entertainment, a Frank Sintra impersonator, also sang for the processional & recessional portion of our ceremony.  I had him sing some of his more upbeat songs (e.g. I have the World by a String).  It really set the mood for the rest of the wedding...plus we really had a short ceremony...15 minutes top.  LOL...most of my friend's boyfriends came up to thank us for the short ceremony and the open bar!

Sighhh...looking at my wedding pictures...would love to convince Hubby to do it again.   He had promised me at our 25th anniversary but that sounds so far away.  I would love to do it again sooner.  Would you want to do it again?