Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Put us in the 2%-5% category.

High fevers are scary for parents.  High fevers that just won't go away are even more scary for parents. High fevers that cause those nightmarish febrile seizures are the most scary.
Around two to five percent of children will experience at least one febrile seizure in their early years.  Kyra Mae is now in that two to five percent.
On Thursday evening Kyra was running a fever bordering on 104 and that 104 was only so because we were alternating Motrin and Tylenol.  The doctor was aware and told us to continue and if it continued over a few hours then to bring her in or take her to the ER.  We toughed it out a little because  I really thought, and still think, the fever was due to her contracting the viral infection Teagan had the day before (more on that one later) and it just needed to run its course.  That evening while I was rocking my sweet baby in my arms in the rocking chair in her room she started twitching.  Twitching like I've never felt or seen before.  Her eyes were rolling back in her head.  She was moaning.  All of these signs didn't seem out of the ordinary to me at first because they were similar to how a sick baby might act while she's tired.  Maybe not everybody's sick baby acts that way but Kyra was born into a family of "twitchers".  When I'm tired or I am finally starting to fall asleep I start twitching.  Kyra has always moaned when she is in the process of sleeping. And her eyes rolling back and crossing were not that much out of the ordinary anyway because she was so sleepy.  The next morning febrile seizures came to mind and so I looked them up just to make sure....I called the nurse on call and my fears were confirmed.  The scariest part was that she had had three in a matter of hours.
Honestly, I got more anxious after than during.  Kyra was, well I'm not sure lucky is the word but I'll use it anyway, lucky enough to have them at night, in my arms, while she was almost asleep.  We didn't have to worry about her falling down, I was holding her so she wasn't flailing where she could hurt herself, and they didn't last very long.  I called the doctor the next morning to run what happened by a professional and they said just to monitor.  As long as her fever was going down (and it was) and she had no more then there was really nothing they would do.
It seems like these nightmares are more common than before.  In the last two years I have heard more about them than ever before.  Before then I would never had known anything about them.
Just as a general FYI I found a great cheat sheet for febrile seizures that I wanted to share with you all.  I got it from the Kids Health website.






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1 comment:

  1. Hi, I have just helped to set up this website dedicate to the parents of children with febrile seizures.

    http://febrileseizures.org.uk.

    Please take a look.

    ReplyDelete