What happened

In our house, Superbowl Sunday generally comes and goes without much fanfare. We are not sports fans by any means; but the kids and I will indeed sit down on this day and watch the game. Jonathan and I even pick teams as to who we think will win!

This year though, we had another little event happen during our game. Just as the half time show was about to start, I was talking to Willow one minute; go to speak to Jonathan and then a minute later, look back at Willow who was now unresponsive, slumped over, and when her eyes would open - the eyelids would flutter and you could see her eyeballs rolling to the back of her head. What the heck?!  

We have NEVER seen this happen to our little girl. 

I call the oncall pediatric nurse, by the time they call me back, Willow is now responsive, awake and well. I explain what happened and we had also taken her temp (101); so nothing high at all. The nurse says that since she is awake and alert and responsive now, to just watch her overnight, bring her in tomorrow so we can treat her pink eye (we had noticed she had that about half an hour prior to this happening). So, okay we wait. I take her upstairs to bed, where she starts to mumble incoherently, slurring her speech, not able to give correct answers to who is in her family. All very scary things we have never dealt with for her. 

At this point, the on call nurse called me back, saying she contacted the on call ped himself and he says to take her in. Good thing too, because as we put her in the car, my husband and I see her have a small, convulsive seizure. :( This is all just too much at this point. I lost it. 

Willow and I get to the hospital, and upon checking in, she gets nauseous and due to her hydrocephalus and symptoms, we are taken right back into a room. Vitals are checked, and we are on our way to the nurses and doctors arriving to get the story. Well, we were told that it seems the first episode of her becoming unresponsive was actually the after effect of her having a seizure! It is known as the postictal phase. The Epilepsy Foundation says it best here.  We have not been told about stages of a seizure, because she is not diagnosed as epileptic, so we are new to this whole thing. We thought for sure her shunt was failing and fast! 

Well, we had done a fast MRI in hospital, and it all checked out well. We spoke with both neurosurgery and neurology and have tests in place. The nuclear med study has been done and shows the shunt is indeed still working just fine. Next, we have an EEG set for the 25th of this month, and they are going to check to make sure that nothing has changed since her last one that was two years ago. 

Aside from this most recent event, Willow has done great. She is enjoying school, making friends, been roller skating, learning to do and has just about mastered, her cartwheel. Now on to the one handed cartwheel (in her words)! She is about to graduate out of her IEP with speech therapy, and no longer need services (can you believe how far our little girl, once told didn't even have a brain, has come)!