Hey, I'm back!

I feel like a total schmutz for not writing for so long. I have been so busy trying to just keep up with life that the blogging world has been left out of the picture for awhile.

First I had this huge Primary Training Meeting to get ready for. I had to have all the class lists for next year and all the new lesson manuals, pictures, lesson plans, etc. ready to give to all the primary teachers at the meeting. We have over 150 kids in our Primary and 28 new Sunbeams entering Primary this next year, so the class lists were no easy task. We kept realizing that we had missed a kid here and there that we needed to find a class for. The average class size is 18 kids. Anyway, I'm glad that that task is taken care of for now. Now I just need to write the annual history for our Primary so it can be turned in by the first of the year, put the new class lists into the ward computer so that all the rolls will be correct, and line up when each class will be giving the talks in Primary for the year. Piece of cake.

That meeting was on Saturday. On sunday Emma didn't feel good, I was exhausted, and Mike had pulled a muscle in his back and could hardly move. Needless to say, we skipped church. Monday we had a Shepherd's Dinner and invited my cousin Taren and her family (six in all) and my friend Kris (the Primary President) and her family (five of them) to join us. We had a great time and a successful dinner. Aaron threw up right at the very end of the meal just a little. I thought it was because he had almost an entire orange in his mouth at once. We put all the kids in bed around eight o'clock and cleaned up before we went to bed. Just after midnight Ben came into our room and said Aaron was snoring and wouldn't stop. I went in there and tried to wake him up. He was breathing really wierd and fast and snoring with each breath. He wouldn't wake up so I rolled him on his side so he would stop snoring. The snoring lessened, but didn't stop. About five minutes later Aaron started screaming. I ran in there and he was thrashing around, kinkof like he was trying to kick off his blankets. I untangled him from his blankets and tried to pick him up. It seemed like he was stuck in a nightmare. I couldn't wake him up. Mike used to have night terrors when we were first married that I could never wake him up from, and I thought maybe Aaron was having the same sort of thing. I took Aaron into my bathroom and shut the door so he wouldn't wake up the other kids. After I turned on the light I noticed that his fingers were all gnarled up, his arms were pulled back, and his eyes were rolled back. He was kicking his legs and screaming. Mike called 911 and I put Aaron in the middle of our bed and changed my clothes. I knew he was having a seizure even though it looked nothing like the seizures you see on T.V. The paramedics got here and checked him out. His temperature was slightly elevated (100 point something I think they said) and his blood sugar level was 240 ish. They couldn't get the seizure stopped so into the ambulance we went. Mike stayed with the other kids (all of them were awake and freaking out, by the way) and I went in the ambulance. I was in front with the driver so I couldn't see what was happening, but I could hear what was going on back there. The hospital is seven and a half miles from our house, and even though it was almost one o'clock in the morning it still took almost 20 minutes to get there. Aaron screamed almost all the way there. He stopped when there was only a couple of blocks left. By this time it had been almost 40 minutes since he started screaming. I assume the seizure lasted the whole time he was screaming. When we went into the E.R. he was sitting in his car seat (they took his car seat and strapped it to the gurney in the ambulance) and he looked like a doll. I stood right in front of him and talked to him, and it was obvious that he wasn't in there. He looked right through me and didn't recognize me at all. It was about 2:30 am before I KNEW that he knew who I was. It was so scary seeing my baby laying there in that big bed and having him not know who I was. I felt like he was going through this alone and there was nothing I could do about it, even though I was right there. They did blood tests, a CAT scan, and a spinal tap. Through most of these tests I was grateful that he wasn't in there, because they were very painful and he had to hold very still. It really helped the doctors that were working on him because he just laid there and didn't flinch or cry. It was so sad. The CAT scan showed that there was no damage to his brain from the seizure or from anything else (tumors, etc.), and the spinal tap showed that he didn't have meningitis or anything else like that. The blood tests were normal, his electrolytes were good, and so was everything else. His blood sugar level was still high (it is supposed to be between 70 and 130 they said, so it was about twice the normal), so they wanted me to see my pediatrician the next day to get his blood sugar level tested again. By this time, he was acting more normal and there were no more tests they could do so they sent us home. We got home just before 5:00 am. We slept for about an hour and a half then got up to get the kids ready for school. Mike called in to work and stayed home that day (Tuesday). We slept and tried to recover from the night before. I took Aaron to the doctor (his regular doctor was unavailable so I saw another one in the same office, the one that was on call the night before that had talked to the E.R. doctor) and his blood sugar was 96, so they said it wasn't diabetes. There is a stomach flu going around here, so the doctor guessed that Aaron had a touch of that and had a fever that we didn't notice, and the fever caused the seizure. We have an appointment with a neurologist from Primary Children's Hospital on Jan. 19 (the first available time) just to make sure that he doesn't have epilepsy or something else. The doctor told me to watch him closely for anything out of the ordinary and get him right in if there is anything else. Aaron was acting fine on Tuesday except for being tired. On Wednesday I got the kids to school and Mike to work and sat down at the desk to update this blog. Aaron climbed on my lap and threw up. He threw up all day everytime he had anything to eat or drink. He slept through the night and woke up the next day (Thursday) not wanting to do anything except lay on the floor. I called the doctor and got an appointment for 9:20 am. We took the kids to school and went right over. The doctor looked at Aaron and almost immediately said that he needed to be admitted to the hospital. The doctors office is hooked on to the hospital so we walked over. By the time we got to the pediatric floor, Aaron was so listless and pale that he couldn't move at all. They had a hard time finding a vein that was plump enough to put an I.V. in. When we got into the room he immediately fell asleep and slept for a few hours. He woke up feeling a little better. The rest of the day and night went about the same. Aaron would sleep a few hours then be awake for a few hours. After he got some fluids in him through the I.V. he was able to keep some things down. He drank a lot of apple juice and water. After awhile they let him have jello and chicken broth. By dinner they changed him to a regular diet and he ate quite a bit of macaroni and cheese and part of a milkshake. He kept everything down. The doctor came in around 7 pm to talk to me. He said that it was a good thing that we were there today because Aaron's electrolytes were way out of whack. The other night when they checked them they were at about 4500 - normal. This day they were over 10,000. He was so dehydrated that the doctor said that a few hours more and his organs would start shutting down. My aunt died from having messed up electrolytes. She got really dehydrated quickly and her electrolytes got messed up and her organs shut down. I am so glad I decided to take Aaron to the doctor that morning. The other appointment they had available was at 2:50 in the afternoon. By then who knows what would have happened.

Anyway, Aaron did so well keeping his food down and getting rehydrated that we were able to check out around 11 am. We went and got the kids from school (today was an early out day) and came home and Aaron and I fell asleep on the couch for an hour and a half. He is doing SOOOO much better. Thank you for all your prayers. I know they helped. I am going to make sure that he keeps getting lots to drink and has lots of wet diapers. If he doesn't he will have to go back, and none of us want that.

I have lots of pictures of him in his hospital bed looking small and pathetic, and of the family decorating the tree, and of me donating ten inches of hair to Locks of Love ( two weeks ago tomorrow). I have cute pictures of Emma with three missing front teeth. We have something wrong with our computer and it won't let us download our pictures from our camera. It thinks they are a virus. So, maybe I will post a lot of pictures when we get it fixed.

Anyway, for the moment we are all well and good. I hope we stay that way.