The rest of the story

Alex woke up for church and felt fine. He was fine all through church. After lunch I started to notice that he was really quiet and kind of off by himself. He eventually came to me and said he had a headache. I told him we would get ready to go. An hour later, yes I know, we finally left. We stopped by Pelicans, a snowball stand for you Northern people, on the way home. Alex did not finish his snowball and now I knew he did not feel well. He kind of perked up at home. I decided to take a nap for a while, a very rare luxury. The kids were either napping, watching TV, or working with Carl. Carl had to go to home depot around 5:00. He took two of the kids with him. When he left Alex expressed a desire to bake something. I was encouraged that he was finally feeling better. He picked a recipe and got out all the ingredients. He loves to bake and I normally just let him do his thing. He came to me about 10 minutes later and told me he needed my help. He told me he needed help concentrating. Red flags started going off in my head. I jumped up and went to help him. I asked him to read the first ingredient. He said "flour". So far so good. I then asked him to read the measurement and that is when I grabbed the phone to call the doctor. He could not read it. He got very upset at this point. I noticed his face was ticking and he started wandering around the kitchen mumbling. Things kind of got scary at this point. I was trying to call Carl to tell him to get home NOW! I accidentally called my mom and freaked her out. She was in church at the time. I found out later that she immediately left church and was ready to come up to our house but my dad stopped her. At this point Alex's speech went haywire. He could not form any words and his eyes just started to look around vacantly. I sat him down on the ground and had enough knowledge to know that I had to get everything out of his way. The thing that upset me the most was once I got him down on the ground he began to speak again, except it was only one word. He looked right at me and just kept repeating the word "please" over and over again. I lost it. I could do nothing to help him. I gently laid him down on the floor and yelled at one of the kids to get a pillow. That is when things got even crazier. Carl called and I not so gently told him to GET HOME! Nathan is standing over Alex asking what is wrong. Tirzah is crawling over Alex and trying to get him to play. The doctor calls back and at the moment I turned to pick up the phone Alex went into a full blown seizure. At this point I am screaming at the nurse. She tells me to hang up and call 911. Don't know how my hands managed to dial the number, keep Tirzah off Alex, move the high chair, and yank Alex's glasses off his face but I did. I just remember calling out to God LOUDLY over and over. The 911 operator must have thought I was crazy. I managed to get out what was happening. The seizure only lasted a minute but it felt like forever. I have never been so scared in my life. Carl decides to walk in the door at this moment. I hand him the phone because I just want to hold my son at this moment. Alex actually gets a little combative right after the seizure. By the time the calvary arrives he is no longer convulsing and is in the typical post seizure state. After they assure us that he is fine I feel a little better. I am trying to type all this before the kids all wake up but my window of time has ended. I will continue the story at a later time, hopefully tonight.

The Last Few Days

Complete and utter exhaustion. That is how I feel right now. I am so tired that I cannot sleep. Have you ever been there? It has been a whirlwind of a few days. Let me start back a few weeks ago. We went on vacation to Colorado. It was a very stressful trip with wrecking the van, breaking my foot, and several other injuries to various children. I came home to about 20 loads of laundry and all the unpacking. Carl had army duty the day we got back so he was not able to help me. He did as much as he could and he was so sweet trying to take a lot of the load off of me. The next few weeks I truly believe that I was in a cycle of severe depression. I did not get a lot done and just sat around. I was overwhelmed with the upcoming school year and trying to deal with some behavior issues that are evident in the kids. It has really been in the last week and half that the Lord has really been working in my heart. I was trying to do everything in my own power and I was failing miserably. I decided to just emerse myself in things of the Lord. I starting really making time for Him. My prayer life increased and so did my joy. I started to really feel like I could get back on track with my relationship with the Lord. The kids and I started reading the book Crazy Love together and I really started to see some changes in them. I think now now that the Lord was preparing my heart for what happened this weekend. He knew that I needed to be close to him to get through the last couple days. It all began with William. He came in our room about 5:30 on Saturday morning. We had spent Friday at the beach so we all were very tired and had slept well. He came in and told me that Alex was shaking the bed so bad that Alex woke him up. Very groggy at this time in the morning it took me a minute to realize what he was saying. He finally got through to me that Alex was convulsing. When that finally hit me I jumped up and ran into his room. Alex had stopped shaking by this time but had fallen out of bed. When I found him he was unresponsive and had a huge amount of saliva bubbled in his mouth. That was when it really hit me what had happened. My sweet 13 year old teenager had experienced a seizure. Alex was completely out of it but we were finally able to get him in our room and everyone went back to sleep. Except for me. I stayed watching him and looking up seizures on my iPad. I really was questioning whether he really did have one since I did not witness it. Of course right as I drifted off to sleep Alex popped up and started asking me whether we were going to Baba's house and whether he could get dressed. He was fine and had no memory of what had happened. I now realize that this is very normal and his deep sleep and unresponsivness was him recovering from the seizure. We decided to take him to the doctor and got a 10:30 appointment. On the way there we stopped by Golden Corral and that is when I noticed he was acting strangely. He did not eat anything and for Alex that is unusual, especially since Golden Corral is his favorite restaurant. By the time we got to the doctor he was just not himself. He was answering questions with one word answers and ended up laying on the floor of the exam room. When the doctor did his exam he was dizzy and kind of falling all over the place. She call the neurologist and the fear was that he was continuing to have small seizures that we were unaware of. Off to the ER we went. About 10 minutes before we got there he completely perked up and became his normal self. They did nothing in the hospital but monitor him for a while and then send us home. They told us that we would need to see the neurologist the first thing on Monday morning. We went home thinking this was going to be a one time thing. I of course had him sleep in our room so I could keep an eye on him. The next morning, Sunday, he woke up fine so off to church we went. Right now I am very tired so I will continue the rest of the adventure at another time, hopefully not 3 months from now.