Lauren on Christmas day 2007. The day before her seizures started.



It was 3 years ago today that Lauren's seizures first started. I tend to relive the trauma of the day so I will put it on here, then I can also have a record of it too....

We had just had a wonderful Christmas and the kids were up in the morning playing with all their new presents. Lauren was so happy because she had received a new kitchen set from Santa. She was playing with her sisters in the family room and next thing I know Marc is yelling at me to call 911. We were not familiar with seizures at that time and had no idea what was happening. I really thought she was dying (Her lips were completely blue). The dispatcher was trying to keep us calm and telling us things we should do. The ambulance, fire department, and police arrived(we had told them she hit her head when she started having the seizures so the police had to come investigate) . Her seizure had stopped and the EMT checked her out and reassured us that she was fine and would now sleep in a postictal state for awhile. They told us to just take her into her pediatrician to make sure things were ok. We took our 4 older and very shaken up children to my parents house and took Lauren and Ryan (just 3 months old) to the doctors office. It was the holidays so it was not normal business hours but luckily our neighbor was on call. He looked her over (she was still in a very deep sleep) and sent us over to the hospital lab to have a blood test done. While we were waiting at the lab (which was located in the hospital) she woke up and started acting like her normal self. Within 5 minutes she started having another grandmal seizure. This one sticks out so big to me because I felt like we were in the middle of some movie. A huge crowd gathered around and Marc was asking anyone if they knew CPR (she was turning blue again and that was before we knew you weren't suppose to do CPR while having a seizure). I was just watching and crying in disbelieve, wondering what in the world was going on. Staff at the hospital were requesting emergency help over the intercom and phones. Next thing I know a team of doctors and nurses come running through the halls with a stretcher and other medical equipment. They loaded her little body and pushed her to the ER. As they were going to the ER the questions began, "did she get into poison, is there any medical problems, were their problems with your pregnancy???etc.. My mind was racing trying to think of anything that might of happened to her, something I might of done while I was pregnant to cause this. Soon the seizure was over and she went back into the deep postictal sleep. In the ER she had a ct scan and the blood work done (all were normal), and slept through it all. While waiting for the results she woke up and within a few minutes she had another grandmal seizure. In a matter of a few hours she had 3 grandmal seizures so at that point they loaded her with medication and put her in a drug induced coma like state. At this time they preformed her 1st EEG (brain waves) which came back normal, (this would be the last and only time she had a normal EEG, within 1 week her EEG was very abnormal). She slept for the next 24 hours, and that was the beginning of our journey/battle with epilepsy. It seems like yesterday this nightmare started but in the same moment it feels like an eternity.


Lauren waking up for the first time after her 3 grandmal seizures and drug induced state. Little did we know what she was waking up to and how her world (and ours) would change!


Christmas this year -2010! 12 weeks and 6 days (and counting) of no seizures!
Our hope and prayer is that 2011 will continue in the same way!


On a side note:
The other day I sent Make a wish a link to the video I put together and a thank you note for the wonderful trip our family had. They posted it on their blog page. There are a lot of really neat stories of other wish children on the blog. here is a link to it. http://makeawishfoundationofutah.blogspot.com/