We were drying her hair with the bathroom door closed. It was getting really hot. She said she was hot and we opened the door and she stepped into the hallway. I told her to come back in the bathroom because it felt better with the door opened and we needed to finish her hair.
She came in and about 10 seconds later, she just slumped over the counter and put her head down. I thought she was playing, but then her whole body just went limp & her arms & legs started twitching and I had to lean against her to keep her from falling onto the floor. I keep replaying that moment in my mind and it makes me sick to my stomach. Just watching her go unconscious and falling over. I don't want to see that again.
I called to BJ and he went to get a blanket for her to lay on. By then, I had backed up and sat on the tub with her sitting on my lap. Then she started hallucinating and waving her arms around frantically. We laid her on the floor and she started to panic because she said she couldn't hear us. Her hearing returned, but her face was white and clammy.
We decided to take her to the hospital.
Things I learned:
1. Fainting episodes are preceded by nausea, blurred or double vision (which she said she experienced...she saw 3 of her in the mirror when she came back into the bathroom), & dizziness. When you experience those things, sit or lie down immediately. Don't walk over to the bed or the couch. Put yourself down immediately, or your body will do it for you.
2. Seizures have no warnings. They just occur and the patient doesn't remember what happened. EJ remembered everything up until she passed out. She also remembers little snippets of things while she was going in & out of consciousness...things like me touching her forehead, BJ holding her hand, her sitting against me, but then she would black out again.
3. When the body overheats, it's blood pressure drops to cool the body down. Blood flow, & therefore oxygen flow, decrease from the brain and, boom...down you go.
4. Bodies can twitch during a fainting episode. If I had known that, I wouldn't have been AS worried. But I was so afraid she had experienced a seizure because of the twitching.
5. Vision, hearing, & cognitive skills are obviously affected by lack of blood flow to the brain. Thus, the blurred vision, no hearing, & hallucinations ... it takes several minutes after consciousness for those skills to return to normal.
We were in the ER for the record time of 30 minutes, start to finish. EJ went to work with me today and actually ended up sleeping for 3 hours. She's doing much better now, although she is a little leery of overheating again.
Wow. I love that not-so-little girl a lot.
 |
| EJ on her 12th birthday at the Salt Lake Temple |
