a few very scary days

Two weeks ago we went to church on Sunday morning and dropped Ethan off at Journey Kids at 9am like usual. We picked him up after the service at 10:30 and he was super flushed and warm, had rosy red cheeks and was laying in the volunteer's lap. Since this was extremely unusual for our energetic little man we figured he was coming down with something. On the way home Ethan fell asleep in the car.
We put him down for a nap right when we got home since he was so tired. About 30 minutes into his nap I checked the video monitor and noticed that he was moving. I couldn't quite figure out how or why he was moving and he wasn't making any noise so I ran upstairs to check on him only to find that he was in the midst of a seizure. His eyes were open but unfocused and his body was convulsing. I screamed for Pete and we quickly called 911. The EMTs arrived and we headed to the hospital via ambulance.
Ethan was extremely out of it for a while (which we learned was normal after a seizure) and once we got to the hospital around noon he started to wake up sporadically, was definitely fussy (understandable) and was only moving his right side. His left side was not moving and he would not move his head or eyes to the left at all. This started a bunch of tests - urine, blood, a CT and a spinal tap - and he was hooked up to a bunch of monitors. It was so hard to watch my sweet Ethan getting hooked up to all of this stuff and so scary to not know what was happening in his body. Our minds raced to wonder if he would be able to walk or talk and how our lives might have just changed.
Ethan was in and out of sleep for most of the afternoon and in between tests. We were thankful when the nurses let us stretch the cords so we could hold him.
Little by little he slowly started to regain movement on his left side - first a twitch of his toe, then his leg moved, then his right arm, etc - so that by 5pm that day he was moving all arms, legs and turning his head in both directions. PRAISE THE LORD! Again, PRAISE THE LORD!!!

Ethan was admitted to the hospital because we were still waiting on test results and they wanted to monitor him for another seizure. As of Sunday the doctors' best guess was that he had had a febrile seizure due to his fever but they were concerned about why he had had the paralysis on his left side plus his fever continued to spike after his Tylenol would wear off. They started a round of IV antibiotics because they weren't certain what was wrong and wanted to make sure to start treating him in case it was something serious like meningitis.

During our stay Ethan had the luxury of sleeping in this comfy crib. Let's just say we all did not get a lot of sleep with nurses coming in every hour to check his temp and blood pressure, give meds, etc.
Because of the doctors' concerns we were scheduled for an EEG on Monday which is a test that helps to determine if Ethan's brain showed any focal points for seizures. And so, Ethan got to get lots of wires hooked up to his head.
And because he is a toddler they wrapped his head so he wouldn't pull of the electrodes.
The CT scan and EEG both came back normal. (a big praise!) The spinal tap results came back to show that Ethan had a viral form of meningitis (called enterovirus) which the doctors all said was very common in kids and explained why he had the seizure since it was an infection of his CNS. Because it was viral (and not bacterial, the really serious kind) the infection simply needed to run its course!

On Monday night Ethan's fever finally broke and he was back to his normal self for the most part, aside from being overly tired from having interrupted sleep for two days. On Tuesday morning the neurologists decided that they wanted Ethan to have an MRI just to check and see if there was anything in his brain that caused him to have the left side paralysis. Because Ethan had pulled out his IV on Monday (once his fever was controlled by the Tylenol he would run laps around his crib) we had to get another one put in so they could sedate him. Unfortunately it took 3 - yes THREE - separate attempts by 3 nurses to try and get a vein. Poor Ethan was practically hysterical (with mom and dad not far behind) as they kept trying to find a vein.

Unfortunately before we could get the MRI done their machine went down and so after the major ordeal of putting in an IV they had to take it out. We were scheduled to come back for an MRI in two weeks. The good news was that we got to GO HOME!
Ethan took the rest of the week to catch up on sleep (taking 4 hour naps each day) and by the end of the week we could hardly believe he had been sick at all.

What a scary few days. The best part about it is that even though it was scary, we knew that God was in control and that nothing happens without passing through his hands. There was nothing that we could do to change what was happening, all we could do was pray, comfort Ethan and go from one moment to the next. We are grateful to all of our friends and family who supported us through prayer, sending us messages, bringing us lunch and dinner and just hanging out at the hospital with us. Most of all we are so thankful to Jesus for healing our precious boy and for giving us his peace even when we were so scared!