stop the ride

Sorry for my blogging absence. This post will explain.

Friday morning when he woke up, Caleb complained of a headache and said his feet hurt. I kissed his forehead, which is a tried and true method to check for fever, in case you didn't know, found none, but gave him a dose of tylenol and sent him to school.

When he got off the bus Friday, I asked him how he felt and he said "fine". But as evening wore on, he was dragging and by bedtime, fever was present.

Saturday starts out typical. We check Caleb for fever and find that it is just low-grade at that point. We dose him up and Jon and I go out for breakfast. I called Dad while we were gone just to see how he was feeling (he was doing fairly okay) and then we headed home.

Most of Saturday, Caleb runs some low fever and just kind of flops on the couch. We've seen it before, so no alarm; we're just keeping an eye on him.

After supper on Saturday night, Matthew and I are upstairs watching tv, Jon is at the computer and Caleb on the couch. Jon heads for the kitchen to get some ice cream and (later, he tells me) while he's in the kitchen, hears a noise that he can't place. He comes out to find Caleb seizing on the couch.

From upstairs, I hear him calling Caleb's name, but it's not in a tone any different than he uses when he's scolding Caleb for teasing the cat. So, I don't think anything of it, til he calls my name, of course. And at this point I'm thinking "good grief, what in the world?!?!"

When I get downstairs and see what's going on, he hollers "call 911!" Of course, I do. Two first responders show up; I stay outside. I discover that I can't reach my mom from that phone, as her number isn't programmed into it and my cell is inside. So I called a friend from church.

Medics show up what seems like an eternity later, although it was probably less than 5 or 6 minutes, there is a gurney with my little boy on it and at this point, he's at least responsive, so that's good. I was scared to death. The paramedic told me that febrile seizures are common, which I told my MIL later that "that may be, but it's scary **** when it's your kid".

We spent almost 4 hours at the hospital. A rapid test for Influenza type A came back positive and his fever was 102.3 at the ER. He had a couple of chest xrays which were negative and around 10:30pm he fell asleep.

My friend that I had called and her husband drove almost 2 hours one way to get to the hospital to be with Jon and me. And our pastor and his wife came too. They all stayed til around midnight and we were discharged just before 1am.

Being that Caleb tested positive for Influenza A; all the rest of us have been on a preventative dose of Relenza to keep us from getting it. Oh, and quarantine, which was a great time. The ER doc said that if none of the rest of us were symptomatic by Monday, we could resume normal activities today. Everyone but Caleb, of course. He needs to finish his Relenza and then be seen by his pediatrician before he can get back to school. That'll be Friday at the soonest. And the kicker? he had to have picked it up from school. School, the bus, and home were LITERALLY the only places he was last week. Gah!

It was Matthew's 13th birthday on Sunday and he spent it in the house, taking medicine so that he didn't get ill like his brother. Good times.

Yesterday he didn't have much fever, but he was sick to his stomach and today the fever is back. I'm not so good at this part of parenting. I want my Mommy.

Oh, and just in case you wondered; he WAS tested for "swine flu" but that test had to go to the state lab, which is totally backed up, so it could still be days before we know for sure whether this was it.

And Amanda's mom passed away just before 4:00 this morning. Please pray for Amanda and for her family.

Dad's doing well. Missing his routine and itching to get back to work. And he's not cleared to return to work until the 21st. Surgery went well and there's no reason to suspect that all of the cancer was not removed.

Thank you so much for your prayers, friends!