The day began well with Matthew receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation at the 11am Mass at St. Anne's Church. All the grandparents were there, as well as my brother and his family. Everyone came to our place for a pizza lunch. The kids watched tv, played games, and some of the girls went to the playground, including Rachel. She came home crying, saying she had felt dizzy and had hit her head against the wall on her way home. She went in for a nap, as had Andrew who was surprisingly amenable to it. He must have been well tired out!
When our guests had left and it neared dinner time, Sophie and I went to the coffeeshop to get food for the kids, while Sean and I would go out for dinner as we usually did of a Sunday night. When we stepped back into the house, I heard Sean calling out, "Rachel is not well! Rachel is not well!"
I wondered what it could be as I went to the bedroom. Sean was carrying her and she was convulsing, her head and limbs twisted leftwards. She had also vomited and it was altogether frightening to see her like that. We quickly had Matthew call for the ambulance while we washed her down in the bathroom, Sean carrying her the whole time and the convlusions not stopping. She continued to be unresponsive to our calls, although at one time while dressing her they stopped briefly and I was afraid that she had choked on the vomit and was oxygen deprived and slowly fading away. I desperately called out to her to stay with me while frantically dressing her, and carried her down to wait for the ambulance which had drawn up and was just unloading the stretcher. They loaded it right back and Sean laid Rachel down in the back while I went and sat in front with the driver.
The ambulance made its way quickly to KKH through the rain and darkening sky. Cars tried their best to move aside as we bore down on them, our sirens blaring and wipers beating frantically from side to side. They gave Rachel a dose of anti-seizure medication in the ambulance and she finally calmed down after about ten minutes. The rest of the way she was completely knocked out and we prayed silently, for her to be well again, and for us to be able to accept whatever would come.
At the hospital they found that her lungs were clear and vital signs seemed normal. She was moved to the high dependency ward for monitoring and we eventually went home to get some sleep as we couldn't do anything more for her that night as she was already sedated from the seizure medication, and even after the sedation wore off, she would have gone into her normal night time sleep.
The next morning we went back to the hospital to find her sitting up in bed! I rushed over and held her close, and she was completely unfazed by the whole incident. It was like nothing had happened. She was cheerful and chatty, telling us that she was surprised to wake up and find herself in hospital. She couldn't remember anything beyond having gone to the playground.
They let her go home after observing her over another night. No follow-up medication, although they did give us some stand-by seizure medication which we have thankfully not ever had to use.
What a scare.
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