Well, That's Another 10 Years, GONE

Let me start by saying that everything is fine.

Then let me say that last night took 10 years off my life!

Our sweet Becky had a seizure. And it was a doozy!

Now you know that we are experienced at the seizure thing. Between Mikayla, Emma, and Becky, this was our 13th seizure. That being said, it is never any easier to deal with, and it always seems like each new seizure has something new that we haven't seen before.

The crazy thing is, we were just commenting in December, when Becky turned three, how fortunate we felt that we hadn't had to deal with Becky having a seizure, and how we didn't have to worry about it anymore. Of course, Beatty family karma says, now that you have uttered the words, let me prove you wrong!

And now that it has happened again, I am going to be a wreck whenever Becky or Katie gets sick until they are well past their fifth birthdays!

For those of you who haven't been through this:

What the girls had was a febrile seizure that is brought on by a sudden spike in temperature. It isn't the severity of the fever, but the sudden onset that causes the seizure, e.g. 99 to 103 in 60 seconds. I was once holding one of the girls at the onset of a seizure, and I actually felt the heat flare up around their body.

The seizures happen because the insulation around the nerves in the brain is not yet fully formed, and they can't handle the extra heat - so the body's defense mechanism is to seize. There really is very little risk in the seizure itself unless they stop breathing or it's excessively long (more than 15 minutes). They are then at a slight elevated risk to develop a seizure disorder later in life, and have a 25 % chance of having another febrile seizure.

Becky's seizure was scary because (for us) it was long. Over 10 minutes. She also turned blue, although she was breathing - barely. On top of all that, because she had been in the bath when the seizure started, she got really cold, and when the seizure ended, she shivered violently for another 20 minutes.

It also took her a long time to come back to herself after it was over. She was so still and quiet. It was a good 1 1/2 before she even spoke - which for our little miss, is definitely the longest she has even been silent during waking hours!

BUT, everything is fine. And we will count our blessings. Thank goodness she was with Mikayla when it happened. Mikayla noticed right away that something was wrong. She saw Becky slump over and tried to get her attention. After calling Becky's name a couple of times and getting no response, she dragged Becky out of the tub and into the hall where she could call her dad.

What a girl! I can't even begin to express how blessed I feel that she is so incredibly mature and put together. We already have people asking when she can start babysitting. Just for the record: 9 months, 7 days, 12 hours, 37 minutes, 26 seconds. (Not that we're counting.)

And thank goodness for our friends! Paul and Sarah were over for dinner, so we were able to leave the kids in their capable hands and rush to the hospital. And somehow, our crazy friends managed to take care of our kids, clean the house, and even got flowers! (I know some of you are secretly thinking that this was all just a ploy to get the dishes done...humm...)

And then Ben came right over to the hospital so Becky could have a blessing.

What would we do with our friends? Since we don't have any family close by, it is one of our greatest blessings to have friends like these!

We're grateful for all of you who love us. We love you too.