The ER

Unfortunately, we had a trip to the ER with Jenna last night. As we were getting ready to go to bed last night (around 11:00 p.m.), my dad went into the bedroom (same bedroom where Jenna & Camden were sleeping) and heard one of the kids gasping for air. At first we thought it was Camden since he has been coughing & is sick (more on that later). His first question was "Is he breathing right?" My mom and I quickly came down the hallway & tried to figure out what was going on. My mom realized it wasn't Camden, but Jenna, so I knelt down beside her to see what was wrong. I saw something coming from her mouth, and yelled "something's not right." We turned the light on to see that she had bitten her tongue & had saliva just coming out of her mouth. I quickly picked her up in my arms & started yelling her name, to which her eyes opened, but she was not responding. She was breathing, but she didn't respond. I yelled again "something's wrong, mom! something's wrong!" My mom was right beside me & agreed, so she yelled to Tom who was sleeping in the next room that something was wrong with Jenna. He came running & we told him to call 911. He went to grab a phone, meanwhile, I carried Jenna out to the living room on the couch. Her eyes continued to stay open while my mom just kept telling me to make sure we didn't let her fall asleep. But, she still didn't respond to us. I was getting more & more scared because it was just eerie looking at my little girl in my arms with her big brown eyes open & just like she couldn't even see me or hear me. Tom got a hold of 911 & told them to send an ambulance right away. While we waited for the ambulance, we just continued to keep Jenna's eyes open & slowly she at least seemed like she could hear us, but she still didn't really respond to us other than turning her head a little to our voices. It seemed like it was taking quite a while for the ambulance to get here, so we headed down to the van to just take her to the hospital ourselves because I couldn't stand to watch Jenna like this. As we were pulling away from our apartment, the police showed up with a fireman, and then finally the ambulance. As time went on, Jenna seemed to be coming around bit by bit. She would look at me, then start to shake her head to questions a little, and finally by the time we put her in the back of the ambulance she was actually awake & aware of what was going on. She was obviously a little scared & confused about the ambulance but did good. They checked her vitals & everything & she was OK, so we headed to the hospital. I rode in the ambulance while Tom and my mom followed behind. The nurse said at that point that from everything we had told them, that she was pretty sure Jenna had had a febrile seizure.

On the way there, she vomited, but otherwise did OK. Once we got to the hospital, she talked for the first time to one of the nurses. What a relief! From here, the short version of our couple hours stay is that they drew blood, took a urine sample, took an X-ray, and did a strep test. Everything came back pretty much OK...the strep test was negative, her fever was fairly low grade (about 100.1), the bloodwork looked fine, other than the fact that I guess she's anemic, her urine sample was fine, and the X-ray showed a small amount of pneumonia in her right lung. So, the doctor said that he does think she had a febrile seizure, which is fairly common in children. They gave her another dose of motrin for the low grade fever, gave her a shot of antibiotics, and then we were able to come back home. We also have a prescription for more antibiotics. She finished out the night just fine, and is not running a fever this morning thankfull!

I will post more later about Camden, but I ran out of time here & I've gotta run to get Mackenzie to school!