But this week's particular bout of illness turned south and became a lot more frightening than Kyle or I had really anticipated.
Cyrus for most of Wednesday was vomiting a lot, even when he didn't really have anything left in his stomach he'd still go through this convulsing heaving thing that just makes me want to cry. I hate it when he vomits. It's one of the few things that seems to really upset him - it always comes up his nose as well and then he can't breathe, which makes it hard for him to cry, which just seems to upset him that much more!
In the evening, he couldn't keep anything down at all. The moment of panic was when I realized that that included his anti-seizure meds. I had given him a dose. He threw up within three minutes. And I followed the protocols of giving him a second dose if he throws up within 30 minutes, and he was throwing up before the dose was even finished!
This was compounded by the fact that he had a 102 degree fever and that reduces the threshold for seizures. When his meds were an hour overdue and he started having seizures pretty regularly. We gave him his emergency medicine which, thank goodness, is a suppository and that seemed to calm them for a bit.I was panicking that it was only a matter of time before a status event* would hit. Part of me felt like we should just take him to the emergency room in anticipation, but going there unnecessarily seemed like a terrible idea as well.
The pediatrician wasn't answering her on call pages. And in my panic it took me far too long to remember that there was an on call neurologist too!
Thank goodness for the internet (and FaceBook in particular), which connected me with a group of families that all have children with the same disorder. Lucky for me one of my new ADSL parent friends was online, and able to chat and give me some advice and calm me down having been in similar situations before. She recommended keeping the diastat and car keys on hand, and wait it out at home as long as possible where he would be more comfortable. In general, don't go to the ER if you don't have to.
The pediatrician did finally call me back. I learned from her that you can deliver liquid medicines rectally as well! That you just have to go slow, 1 mL at a time, and that it will be absorbed quite quickly.The neurologist informed us that if we needed to rely a little more heavily on diastat than normal just to get through the night, that one double dose wouldn't hurt him. She advised to wait an hour without vomiting, then try to give him some pedialyte. Then wait thirty more minutes and if he kept that down to redose the seizure meds only a few mLs at a time every ten minutes or so. That again, even if he got one double dose (as we can never be sure how much of the original dose he absorbed before he threw it up) he would be fine, if a little more sleepy than normal.
Two hours, three seizures, and another emergency dose of diastat later we were able to administer the full dose of meds over the course of 90 minutes. His fever had dropped to 100.3 degrees, and we were all able to go to sleep.The next morning he woke up without a fever. Took to some food, though not with as much gusto as usual and was not followed by vomiting. His fever came back during this second afternoon and evening, but it was never as high and he only refused half of his meals. By this morning (three days later), all remnants of the fever are gone, he's still been a little sleepier and calmer than normal, but his appetite seems to be back!
*Status event - also known as status epilepticus, which refers to a seizure that does not break or resolve on its own for longer than five minutes (they can go on far longer than that).
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