After leaving Auburn Friday afternoon, we headed to Montgomery to stay with my grandparents. I'm so grateful for the time Meemaw and Papaw had with our kids, and my kids truly adore them. They spoiled us with a delicious meal, lots of treats, goodies for the kids (and me!), and even let our dog Tucker come crash at their house.
Below is a record for my own memory, for my own "stones" of remembrance and thanks to the Lord for His protection over us:
Friday night, Ellie went to bed with a low grade fever. I gave her Tylenol and put her to bed. She was up at 1 am and so I gave her Motrin because she felt warm again, and we cuddled for a while. She finally fell into a deep sleep at 5:45 am, and "woke up" at 6:45 am. I was holding her and her eyes were open and she was blinking, but she wouldn't respond to me when I said her name and when I got in her face. Her left hand then started violently trembling and the horrible word "febrile seizure" crossed my mind. I turned on the light and saw her lips were blue and she was choking on her own mucus, gasping for air. After frantically calling for Andy, he ran upstairs and called 911, and the 911 operator instructed me to begin CPR. I was fighting hysteria at this point, feeling so helpless as to what to do for her, and really in complete shock this was even happening. I just did one breath of CPR and she coughed up all this clear mucus, but she still wasn't responding well. The ambulance came and were right at the front door when we raced downstairs. Because Ellie still wasn't waking up and started twitching again, the paramedics loaded she and I up in the ambulance and off we raced to Baptist East in Montgomery.
The ER staff were so wonderful, and they did the full work up, chest x-rays, etc. She was negative for all illnesses and her chest x-ray looked perfect. The doctor informed me this was "normal" for children at this age who quickly spike a fever from a viral illness to have a febrile seizure, and he guaranteed me she wouldn't have another one in the next 48 hours (according to literature and research). He even encouraged us to still go to the night game at Auburn. At that point I was seriously doubting I'd go, but nevertheless I appreciated the ER doctor's vote of confidence that she would be fine, that we did everything right, and felt better knowing Ellie had a clean bill of health.
They discharged us from the ER, and after we got back to my grandparents house (where they were graciously watching Jackson), Ellie asked to eat and drink, and before we knew it, she was running around the house, singing, laughing, dancing, acting like her normal self. We had an amazing babysitter come, and I watched Ellie for the next few hours to make sure she was 100% before Andy and I left to go tailgate and go to the Auburn vs. USC game. I texted with our sitter every few hours and she reassured me that Ellie had no fever and was acting perfectly normal.
That being said, I couldn't help but reflect on Ellie's life verse: Lamentations 3:22-23 "Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed; His compassions never fail, they are new every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness!" Amen and amen. We are so thankful at the Lord's hand over every detail, and we are thankful our little girl is great and healthy!
Andy and I were fortunate to be able to sit with my best friend and college roommate and her husband at the game.
