I feel surreal right now. There’s been a lot of that lately, I suppose. I mean, I know I’m not the only one who looks around at masked men and empty store shelves and thinks, “is this real life?” The last three months have felt more like a SciFi movie. But even more than the craziest day of pandemic pandemonium, today I feel like I’m in a haze. As I sit in a very uncomfortable hospital recliner, watching my daughter sleep, through my own grainy eyes, I feel off-kilter. Was that really me that lowered my seizing daughter to the floor this morning? It seems like something that happened in a dream.
This morning my nine-year-old had a grand mal seizure. She was napping on my lap, when suddenly I felt something and looked down. Her body was clenched tight and stiff, her muscles tensed up, and her whole body shaking vigorously. Her eyelids half open, and her eyes rolled back.
I called her name, even though I knew she wouldn’t answer. “Chloe!!!” I screamed.
It turns out she heard that part, but she told me it sounded like a whisper. The music that had been playing was barely audible to her, she had relayed. Later, in the ER, she said she was trying to sit up when she heard me, but she couldn’t move.
When I say I lowered her to the floor, that sounds graceful. I think it was more of a klutzy descent. I threw us down to the ground, more likely, and turned her to the side as I’d always been taught. As I turned my slobbering, seizing baby on her side, stroked her hair, and whispered reassurances, the familiarity of the situation didn’t go unnoticed. I had been the same age when my mother witnessed me having a grand mal seizure. I prayed, “no satan, this ends with me. This curse does not follow my daughter.”
I can’t believe I had the clarity to look at my watch when it started, but I did. I was so happy when her convulsions stopped just before two minutes, and I kept wiping her tears off her face while repeating, “momma’s here, you’re gonna be ok.”
She was seemingly unresponsive at first, but a mild knuckle rub of her sternum caused her eyelids to flutter. I smiled at that small victory. Within five minutes she could tell me in a slurred voice where she was, and by the time I got into the back of the ambulance I could see her perking up. I could tell because she looked scared.
She cried most of the ambulance ride to Orlando Health’s Pediatric Hospital, and I prayed with her for God to help her be brave. I guess that prayer was for me too.
They decided to admit her and have attached her to a continuous EEG monitor to watch the electrical activity of her brain. It was all so familiar. The gel and electrodes, even the strobe light test in her face. I wanted to call my mom so bad and ask her, “how did you deal with this when it was me,” but I couldn’t. That made me cry, but I waited until she was asleep.
In the ER she asked me if God knew this would happen, and I answered yes. Then she asked if He knew, then why He let it happen? I was reminded of this verse.
John 9: 1-3
