A Scary Public Service Message
By Wyatt Earp | January 13, 2011
This beautiful little girl gave us quite a scare early this morning.
My two-year old daughter Julia rarely sleeps through the night. When she wakes up halfway through, the missus brings her upstairs to sleep in our bed. This has been going on for as long as I can remember. Last night, the wife woke me up with, “SOMETHING’S WRONG WITH JULIA!!!” I jumped up and saw the missus holding Julia. Her eyes were glazed over, staring into space, and her mouth was making movements like she was a fish out of water. She wouldn’t respond to us when we called out her name. She was breathing, but something was wrong.
You know all of those stories where cops say their training kicked in? Not so much. I freaked out. I panicked. I knew she didn’t need CPR, but other than that, I just kept calling her name through tears. I thought she was dying right in front of our eyes.
I told the wife to get dressed and rush her to the hospital. She did, and as she left, Julia started crying. I figured that was a good sign. The missus called me a very long hour later and said Julia was okay. The doctors think she has a febrile seizure, which is brought about by a sudden, high fever in children. They pumped her full of liquids, did a few tests, and took a chest x-ray. Everything came back normal and the docs prescribed some medicines to help her through the cold/fever. We had a follow-up with our family practitioner this afternoon.
Suffice to say, after this nightmare I won’t be sleeping very soundly for a long, long time.
If you have young children, check out the information on febrile seizures by clicking here. Arm yourself with knowledge, in case this happens to your child.
Taken in December, this is my favorite picture of her.
Topics: The Girl | 36 Comments »
January 13th, 2011 at 7:17 pm
Yikes, that was scary stuff! As a father of three daughters, I can sympathize with your situation. Glad to hear Julia is ok. And thanks for the head’s up on febrile seizures; I had never heard of those!
January 13th, 2011 at 7:23 pm
Thankfully everything turned out okay. Just remember, transport is critical if you don’t have any idea of what is going on. TIME is of the essence.
January 13th, 2011 at 7:31 pm
FMP – We didn’t know, either (obviously). It’s scary stuff, but apparently, these seizures usually don’t have long-lasting effects, such as brain damage, etc.
Old NFO – We were gonna call 911, but with the lack of manpower in the city’s medic system, we drove the ten minutes to the hospital.
January 13th, 2011 at 7:34 pm
My Jessica had one of those seizures on her 1st birthday in an ice storm, I remember how damn scary it was, I sympathize with you Wyatt, but on a postive thought, she only had the one – we were always expecting another, but it never came
January 13th, 2011 at 7:41 pm
Gut-wrenchingly scary! I’m so glad she is okay. I am ever more glad that the missus’ sixth sense kicked in. Wow!
(That is a beautiful picture of Julia.)
January 13th, 2011 at 8:07 pm
Robbie – I hope this is our only experience with it. The most frightening thing I have ever experienced.
RT – She heard the shallow breathing. Thank God she did.
January 13th, 2011 at 8:10 pm
Holy crap that’s scary! Thank goodness she’s OK.
January 13th, 2011 at 8:17 pm
I am a regular reader of your site and am glad to hear your daughter Julia is okay!!
January 13th, 2011 at 8:23 pm
Thanks fo the heads up about the seizures.
I will be praying fo Julia and you family
January 13th, 2011 at 8:27 pm
I guess I’ll even pray harder for the Earps.
When she goes to bed give her a kiss from all of us…..
January 13th, 2011 at 8:37 pm
I’ve dealt with that with Hannah. It is very scary as you are there holding your daughter feeling helpless. Logic dictates (when you know what it is and it has happened a few times already) that she will be fine, the panic is still there as you wait for it to pass.
This is why (after the first time) we have basically made it an unofficial policy that a sick child sleeps with us. If you have any questions about what we’ve experienced and learned from our experience, feel free to ask.
January 13th, 2011 at 8:56 pm
My son Alex had one of these episodes when he was just over a year old. He’s now 5, and only had them the one time, but he had the one at home and then one at the hospital just as they were about to release him.
We went through the EEG process, we worried about it, and we were nervous for the next year and a half. Other than him not sleeping quite so deeply for a few weeks, we never saw any real change in him, and he’s doing just fine now.
We were told “Sometimes these things just happen, and you’ll never know why.” While this isn’t satisfying, it’s about as much as we got, and the alternative was for our boy to end up an epileptic with grand mal seizures, because then we’d know the cause…. We’re happy not knowing the cause, thankyouverymuch.
I’m sure you’ll end up sleeping again, it only took my wife (who can fall asleep in thirty seconds) about six months to start sleeping well again.
Sorry to hear you’re going through it, and much luck to you.
January 13th, 2011 at 9:03 pm
Wyatt, I am so glad your little lady will be ok. She is a beautiful little girl. Be thankful your wife checked on her when she did. (Did someone upstairs tell her to wake up?) Stay safe, may He watch over your family.
January 13th, 2011 at 9:45 pm
{Wyatt}
Febrile or other wise seizures can be extraordinarily frightening. Fortunately with febrile, little ones bounce back.
I have sort of the opposite problem, doing foster care with my background as a FF/EMT we get a lot of medically fragile infants, means lots of “exciting” events. Recently one the boys fell off playground equipment and gash his head a few stitches worth. School expressed to my wife I didn’t seem concerned enough when I picked him up.
She’s a doll and hope and pray you don’t have much more of this type of excitement.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:10 pm
Lou – Yeah, it’s been a very bad day, but we got it all back together in time to celebrate Kyle’s big day.
Beaver – Thank you very much.
Rick – That’s the only reason I posted about this – to let other parents know.
LDIV – Already done. She got a lot of attention today.
Kim – I just thank God that she was in our bed when it happened. And I prayed longer than I have in years this morning.
PhillipC – It’s after 10pm and I have to be up by 5:45. Gonna be a fitful night, I’m afraid.
Robert B. – Today was a wake-up call for me, I think. I need to get closer to God and I need to spend as much time with the kids as humanly possible.
JCM – Yeah, I would like a boring few years as far as she’s concerned. Before bed she was feeling great, but tired. Hopefully, she’ll sleep well tonight.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:24 pm
Glad she’s alright, Wyatt. My boys would wack each other and make the blood fly occasionally, but the girls are the ones that scare you.
January 13th, 2011 at 11:17 pm
Prayers for no recurrence.
Spending an awful lot of time praying lately… Mom was down from upstate visiting us and had a blood pressure incident that sent her to the hospital for 48 hours (fortunately, she came through it fine… it’s happened to her once before, but when you’re 85, you gotta worry about it)… the brother-in-law’s father is facing a long road back from complications from a hole in his esophagus which showed up right after Christmas. He’s progressing…
It’s getting to the point where God’s gotta be saying, “What’s he want NOW?”
Take care and God be with y’all.
January 13th, 2011 at 11:25 pm
Scary stuff. Glad the hear that she is doing fine. Late night ER trips are no fun at all.
January 13th, 2011 at 11:39 pm
best wishes for the lil darlin
January 13th, 2011 at 11:54 pm
WOW…I’m so glad everything turned out okay! That would have scared me to death. I hope she has a speedy recovery from her cold, and I hope you guys can get some sleep, although I can definitely understand if it’s broken sleep for a while.
January 14th, 2011 at 4:35 am
Glad everything is okay.
January 14th, 2011 at 6:48 am
Praying she gets better soon
January 14th, 2011 at 7:37 am
Nothing can rattle you like your child’s health. I mean they seem so tough until they get sick.
I am glad it is OK now.
January 14th, 2011 at 7:50 am
Piper – I’m slowly realizing that.
Bob – Jeez, prayers being sent.
Ingineer66 – The plus side was that the ER was a ghost town and we didn’t have to wait to get her seen.
WPDunn – Thank you.
DL474 – She slept fine last night; straight-through and uninterrupted. I, on the other hand, woke up every hour.
JT – Thanks. It was really scary.
The Duck – Appreciate it.
USAdmiral – I just hope there’s not a recurrence, but if there is, at least we’ll be better prepared next time.
January 14th, 2011 at 8:04 am
Yikes…my now 18 yo son did that at about 20 months.
Was holding him when he began seizing.
As a trained medical professional I knew what to do!
Yeah. Right…
The parent took over and in my mind I was running around in circles screaming!!
I knew what was happening, but….
It was a febrile seizure and I have dealt with many patients and parents, just fine in my EMS career, but when it was mine!!??
Scary.
Glad your little girl is all right and she appears to be a redhead!! As are both my boyz….Redheads be special!!!
January 14th, 2011 at 8:54 am
Mad Medic – My experience exactly. Running around and screaming. Not exactly conducive to good response.
January 14th, 2011 at 8:54 am
Wyatt, that was a good call to transport Julia yourself. Thoughts and prayers sent for y’all.
January 14th, 2011 at 9:15 am
Wyatt:
I vaguely remember my folks rushing me to hospital when I was real young due to a high fever…I became dehydrated because of a bad cold and my temperature shot up around 104.
Mom said I was “like a rag doll”…way too lethargic.
Don’t remember much else except waking up in a hospital room w/ an IV in me…pretty scary for a 6 year old.
I am very glad that things worked out well for everyone there (esp. Julia).
You done good.
Roll safe.
January 14th, 2011 at 9:44 am
Old NFO – It was the only good decision I made that night.
Bob G. – Thanks. She was running around the ER before she left. Bounced back pretty well.
January 14th, 2011 at 3:53 pm
Given your family’s recent medical history, I think I’m gonna buy stock in the company who runs your local hospital
January 14th, 2011 at 5:31 pm
Holy shit, Wyatt…..glad she’s OK now but good God that must’ve been scary as all hell
January 14th, 2011 at 6:42 pm
Roger – We usually go to Holy Redeemer in Abington, PA. They’re great. But we chose Aria (formerly Frankford-Torresdale) this time because it’s a little closer.
Fenway – That doesn’t even cover it. Terrifying is a little closer.
January 14th, 2011 at 8:43 pm
We’ve been fortunate no seizures, I was getting our oldest (four at the time) out of bed for school one morning, when I damn near threw up!!!!
She looked like she was trying to swallow a golf ball (some kind of infection in one of her glands, nothing more fun than having to help the nurse on the second attempt at putting in a wrist IV.
I had to actually lay completely across her (250lbs at the time) with 2 nurses clamping down at her wrist and inserting the IV…..
4yo are tough…..
January 15th, 2011 at 6:05 am
Thank God all is well now.
Blessings to Julia.
January 16th, 2011 at 8:59 pm
ThomasF – She was running around the ER before she was discharged, so she bounced back nicely.
Ed – Thanks. I don’t ever want to experience that nightmare again.
January 16th, 2011 at 10:24 pm
Woah Ive never heard of that myself. Its good to know for the eventual day that I may end up having kids.
Glad shes ok and Ill be praying for Julia, you and the rest of your family.