Restart the clock; seizure #6

[Disclaimer: Grandma I. and Grandma Jaaym.. don't panic.. it's all fine.. this is just me musing about it all after the fact.. Ben's fine.]

Well.. we don't have specific proof because we didn't witness the actual seizure, but both Shiela and I are 99.9% sure that he did, in fact, have another one a few nights ago. There has been a nasty virus going around that all the kids at school have or have already gotten. Ben was out of preschool from last Friday through this past Wednesday.

On Monday night at about 2am, Ben woke up and called to us from his room. This, in itself, wasn't too much of a waving red flag.. but he usually does just come in our room and climb into our bed by himself. I went in to check on him and he was roasting. I took him back to our room, took his temp (it was 103) and gave him motrin and something to drink. His temp dropped and he went back to sleep.

On Tuesday, we brought him to the doctor for the second time in 4 days. We found that no.. he still didn't have an ear infection, although he has fluid in one of his ears, and that yes.. it's still the same virus. He was contagious until the temp broke.. ish.. and being the overprotective types that we are.. we had planned to keep him home for a month (just kidding).

For the remainder of Tuesday his temp stayed down and on Wednesday I stayed home with him just in case. It was a TERRIBLE day. He was destructive, hitting, screaming.. just being an all around PITA. I was exhausted by about 9 AM.

I had an appointment with my therapist that afternoon and Benji was going stir crazy from being inside for almost a week. I called over to Ruth and she more than happy to take him for about an hour so he could play with the other sick kids. (note: Mom.. he had been fever free for more than 24 hours... so I wasn't breaking the rules).

Things moved along.. work was crazy for Shiela and me.. trying to catch up after both missing two days of work covering for Benji's time home. Benji continued to be a terror. Very difficult to control.. VERY rough at daycare.. we initially wrote it off to him adjusting to being back after being gone for a week and maybe he still wasn't feeling 100%.

Yesterday (Friday), when we picked up Benji.. he was sitting with Ruth.. and neither looked very happy. There was a tube of elmers glue sitting next to Ruth. We just took one look and were like.. "uh oh...". Ben was the last kid there and he had just taken a three second opportunity when Ruth ran to the bathroom to rip all of her decorations that the kids had helped with off of the living room wall. It was another day of him being a nightmare.. he threw an entire dish of yogurt all over some of the other kids.. just general destructive stuff. The weird part was that he was in a good mood and the lash-outs didn't fit with the typical temper tantrum.

Ruth mentioned his seizures and said that this was exactly how he was when he had his seizures and that she was worried about it. Shiela and I took this to mean.. maybe he was working on some pre-seizure activity especially with the fluid in his ears and we decided to bring him in to his pedi again today (3rd time in a week.. are you proud mom? Ben's working on his own wing at ABC Pediatrics).

Update:: Approximately 8 hour later...

Everyone concurs.. little dude probably had a minor seizure or at least some pretty significant pre-seizure activity. Nothing really to do about that but ride out his mood swings while he gets back on his game. He's still in the category of typical febrile seizure disorder since we've only had 1.5 seizure that was unprovoked..

More importantly, he now has a raging ear infection. Doh! We were pretty sure that the fluid in his ears was bothering him but as of his last two visits this past week -- there was no infection. Not anymore.. his poor right ear looks painful!

The doctor was awesome (and Ben is such a good kid).. she let both me and Shiela look in both of Ben's ears.. one had just fluid but no infection and the other was infected. It was amazing to be able to see it (and a bit gross), but at least we know what they mean when they take a peek and say "whoa.. that must hurt".

We'll be calling his ENT on Monday morning and I'm fairly sure that he'll have his third set of ear tubes in within two weeks depending on how full their surgery schedule is.