Baby White Tunnel

posted by Carol:



aka a MRI machine. But to Julia, it's a baby white tunnel. Sounds fun, right?

Julia is prone to febrile seizures, which just means, seizures brought on by sudden high fevers. There's no lasting harm and no cause other than a fever. Evidently, before the age of five, 4% of kids will experience a febrile seizure. But when one parent has had a febrile seizure, then a child's chance of febrile seizure is 50%. I had one as a kid, so it makes sense that Julia has them too. She had two last year. The first one happened with her grandparents as they were heading to Wayne's practice. Because we didn't see it, we didn't realize how scary it was for her poor grandparents and I didn't even realize it was a febrile seizure. The only thing that worried Wayne a little bit was that for a couple of minutes, she was completely limp on the right side of her body. That's atypical of febrile seizures, but not unheard of.

The second one happened while at Wayne's friend's house. She was really not herself, so I tried breastfeeding her to calm her down. I think it was the way she started clamping down, that it occurred to me that she might be having a seizure. I called out to Wayne, who was helping his friend clean up after a party, but I was also imagining the insanity of trying to simultaneously deal with Julia's seizure and a broken bloody boob, so I was working hard to free myself from her as well. Anyway, even though I now know there's no real danger from a febrile seizure, I didn't know it then and the thought that she was dying flashed through me. Felt very powerless. Could not even imagine how Wayne's mom had dealt with it. I hadn't ever witnessed a seizure, and it's pretty darn scary, with the eyes rolling, mouth frothing, the rigid shaking. And I hear that epileptic seizures are even more scary! Anyway, we went to the ER after that one. Again it was atypical.

She had her third (atypical) febrile seizure a couple of weekends ago. Wayne was alone with her driving, and keeping an eye on her because he knew that a fever had started. She went rigid and didn't respond to his calling her for a minute? Hard to tell the time for such a thing.

The neurologist said that even though he felt confident that everything was fine, we might as well get a MRI of her brain, just so we wouldn't have to worry anymore.

To prepare Julia, I showed her pictures of the machine that I found online and tried to describe it in terms that she would like. She likes tunnels, and look it's a small tunnel, oh, so cute like a baby. It's a baby white tunnel! Somehow, Julia decided that not only would she see a baby white tunnel in the hospital, but that Mickey Mouse would be there too. I should have corrected her, but paid for it later when a slurring delirious toddler was sobbing the whole car ride home that she wanted to see Mickey Mouse in the hospital. Um, anyway, overall it went well. She's good with doctors and needles, and the results show she's got a perfectly normal brain. So Julia is good to go.