How it felt to witness my daughter’s second seizure
Eleven days after my daughter’s first seizure we were shaken by another one. A week and a half was enough time for her to break the fever, return to daycare, catch another virus, and have another seizure.
It looked different this time. Frankie had gone down for a nap just 20 minutes after waking up for the morning. When I took her out of her crib a few hours later, she didn’t greet me with her usual sleepy smile. Having experienced this on two occasions now, I know that this change in behavior is potentially a sign of fever.
I took her to the rocking chair to feed her the breakfast she had skipped. Her head in the crook of my right arm, I studied her as she struggled to nurse. And then she let out a scream.
It was a cry I had never heard before. I’d never heard it because it wasn’t hers. It wasn’t her face that was contorted by the scream, either. It was a subconscious eruption of sounds sparked by an electrical surge in her brain. It felt as though I watched the scream from afar — an out-of-body experience looking down on me as a mother holding my young child the way a fearful parent does.
When the scream ended the convulsions began. With her in my arms I ran to the top of the stairs and yelled to my mom and mother-in-law, who were downstairs enjoying a nice…
