Early Morning Wake-Up Call

Excuse me if I ramble here, but it’s been a kinda long night. Or early morning. Or something.

For some silly reason, I had been procrastinating when it came to wrapping Megan’s gifts. Everyone else’s have been done, but I waited until 10pm or so on Christmas Eve to get started on hers. Once everything was wrapped, I had to suggest to Megan that she might want to go to bed sometime soon, so that I could put the presents out and go to bed myself. Yes, she knows that Santa isn’t real, but for some reason, I still don’t like to just plop the presents out under the tree in front of her…I guess I like to preserve at least a little of the illusion…

So, after a minute of griping, she finally went to bed, I put out the presents and filled her stocking and then went to bed myself around 11:30pm. At a little after 3am, a huge crash woke me up. Dinah and Harley (who, of course, were asleep on top of me, or at least as near as they could get) heard it, too, and jumped up, so I got up to investigate. For some reason, the first thought that came to my mind was, “maybe Megan fell out of bed,” but I dismissed it, because well, she’s 16 years old…why on earth would she fall out of bed?

As I walked down the hall past her bedroom door, I heard a noise that to me sounded like….well, like the sound a cat makes when it is trying to throw up a fur ball. I know that’s disgusting, but when I heard it, that’s what I thought of…that one of the cats was getting sick…except, the sound was coming from Megan’s room, and her door was closed. No cats where in there….

In full panic mode now, I ran in her room to find her face down on the floor next to the bed. I won’t go into all of the gory details – mostly ’cause I don’t even want to think about them right now – but it appears now that she may have had some kind of a seizure. When I couldn’t get her to look at me or answer my questions, I called 911. By the time the ambulance arrived a few minutes later, she was sitting up and quieter, but she was still pretty disoriented and unable to answer any questions.

Now, at that point, I wasn’t sure what was going on…and I was avoiding the word ‘seizure’ in my mind. Megan is a VERY sound sleeper, and I still clung to the thought that maybe she had fallen out of bed, bashed her nose on the floor (which did bleed a little bit) and was just not completely awake and that’s why she wouldn’t really respond. But, when she was still out of it while the paramedics were talking to her, though, it seemed less likely that she was still just half-asleep. The paramedics also were concerned enough about her inability to answer questions like “what high school do you go to” and “what’s your birthdate” – things that she would normally rattle off, no problem – that they decided to take her to the hospital.

They asked me if I wanted to ride in the ambulance with her or follow in my car, and I was torn. On the one hand, who wants to leave their child alone in this situation, but on the other, it was the middle of the night, and without a car, I wasn’t sure how we would get home later. I really didn’t want to have to call anyone at 5am on Christmas morning to come and get us! The EMTs understood, and suggested that since she seemed to be ok for the moment, she was awake and talking some, and seemed to be coming out of it (whatever IT was), that I should follow them in my car. Traffic was pretty much non-existent, so I had no problem keeping up.

At the hospital, she was taken to the pediatric ER because of her age. By the time I had parked the car and was taken to her room, she was much more “with it” and now, in typical Megan fashion, was starting to get upset with the situation. Her main concern was that she was going to get a shot. She was able to get up and walk to the bathroom herself when they said they needed a urine sample – fun times there! – and was able to answer all of the questions that had previously gotten no response. She doesn’t seem to remember falling out of bed or anything that happened after that.

They did some bloodwork and a CAT scan, said that so far everything looks normal. Being a typical emergency room, they won’t actually diagnose a seizure, but for all intents and purposes, that’s what they are saying it looks and sounds like. They sent us home at around 6am with instructions on what to do if she has another one, and told me to follow up with her physician. They suggested that she have an EEG and a brain MRI to get a better, more detailed picture of what may be going on. We were sent out with the statement that she could have another seizure in an hour, a day, a week, 3 months, or never. Way to narrow it down! Woohoo!

We got home sometime between 6:30 and 7am, and Megan immediately insisted on opening her presents. (This is after trying to convince me to stop at Krispy Kreme for doughnuts on the way home, because suddnely she was STARVING, and a chocolate doughnut would make her feel better.) She then made me hook up her new Wii so that she could play. Sure, why not…I’ve been up since 3am, after sleeping for all of 3 1/2 hours…let me hook up the electronics for you!!! lol…She played for a little while, then we both decided to go take a nap.

So now, SHE is asleep. I slept for maybe an hour or so before waking up. Then, of course, my mind starts up (is she awake? is she asleep? is she going to have another one? what was that noise? let me go check…) so that there’s no way I will get to go back to sleep this morning…or rather, this afternoon.

We are still planning to attend this afternoon’s Christmas festivities at Dave and Jen’s house (pending any futher issues), so I still need to make some crab dip and frost the butter cookies I made yesterday. Or maybe I’ll just make the crab dip. We’ll see…

I hope everyone else is having a much more Merry (and drama-free) Christmas than ours started out to be!!!