The One Where My Eldest Takes Another Ten Years Off My Life

A few months ago Declan was sick, running a high fever and climbed into my lap for some cuddles. Literally the moment he settled there his arms bolted out from his body, his neck lost all tension and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

The following hours after that are a blur, just fuzzy images in my head. Getting angry at the emergency line operator because I was calling from a mobile so she made me confirm our address three times, looking at my little boy’s body on the floor and seeing blood pooling from his mouth, watching Dan cry because our son was just a limp body on the floor.

The only thing that remains clear in my mind is when I looked down to see his head tip backwards and his eyes roll to being completely white. That image is burned into my mind. I had nightmares about it for weeks after wards and I still do occasionally when I’m stressed out or having a hard time with something.

The seizure was a febrile convulsion, just the brain’s way of dealing with excessive heat from a fever, the way it was explained to us was that the body works out what is briefly expendable so it can focus on stopping the fever, and so shuts off the brain for a couple of minutes. Now, I know I’m a little underqualified here, but if I was the body this probably wouldn’t be my way of doing things, I’d shut off the appendix, the spleen or maybe one of the kidneys for a few minutes, but not the brain. It sounds like overkill to me, but who am I to argue with evolution? Declan is apparently susceptible to them, which, for the record, is entirely Dan’s fault, as he also had them regularly until the age of five. Once again this is just another point in my argument for demanding full medical history from any man you even think about breeding with, or even have sex with, just incase. My next husband I shall vet more thoroughly.

Today Declan went from waking up fine that morning to burning up before lunchtime, he was given Nurofen to drop the fever and we tried to get him in a cool bath but he now knows the routine so I think we would have had more luck (and less injuries) shaving a cat. Around midday he was walking over to my armchair when it happened, his arms flew out to the sides, his eyes rolled to white, his body went stiff that he just fell backwards as though you’d toppled a domino. He cracked his head on the tiled floor and immediately snapped out of the seizure, obviously his body decided that to deal with his pain the brain was probably pretty important right at that moment. I was just happy that I was soothing a child who was upset because he’d hit his head rather than one that was upset and frightened because his body had started spasming uncontrollably.

But I still saw his eyes roll, and saw his body briefly lose control, I still felt that moment of sheer terror, and once again, every time I close my eyes that vision is back. I don’t think there is anything more scary than the thought of losing a child. Not until I gave birth did I realise how much these boys would change me and my life, the thought of not having either of them in my life any longer completely turns my blood cold. I love them with every last bit of me, but I dread to think how many years each of these episodes have knocked off of my life, let alone how many grey hairs they’ve added to my skull.

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