A mother's worst nightmare.

I don't think there is a mother out there who doesn't wonder what would happen if they lost a child. I have never known anyone who has lost a child at an early age. I've had friends who have miscarried a child during pregnancy, which I'm sure is very difficult to handle. And I've often wondered how hard it would be, and if I could be strong enough for that type of challenge.

Yesterday, I thought I was losing Isaac. It was by far the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I would rather lose a limb, go blind, die myself than have to see my own child die before my eyes. We moved to Santa Fe on Thursday and it was a very smooth and quick move thanks to our Elder's Quorum in Saratoga and the missionaries in Santa Fe. Yesterday, Mike went to work and I stayed home trying to figure out where to put everything.

Friday night, Isaac went to sleep a little feverish. Since the weather is changing I thought that he was catching a little cold. In the middle of the night, he was burning hot, so I gave him medicine and put him to sleep on our bed. The next day he was still hot and unfortunately I didn't give him anything else because: 1. I do take seriously the power of drugs and the advice of doctors when they say that most of these cold medicines don't do anything for children anyway, 2. I like to let nature run its course, he needs to boost his imune system. He was acting as normal as a child can under the circumstances, so I made sure to push as much liquid into him as he would let me.

Isaac slept all day pretty much, between watching Robots three times. Around 4ish, I went in and started watching with him and he laid down on the floor with his head on my lap. We were talking and watching the movie, and all of a sudden Isaac starts convulsing. For the first two seconds I thought he was laughing at the movie. I looked down and realized that he wasn't laughing, so I grabbed him, ran downstairs to get my phone and went outside yelling for help. The neighbors heard me and called 911 also. I was trying to call them, call Mike and lay Isaac down on the sidewalk. I noticed he was purple and could't breathe. I threw the phone down after calling 911 and tried to perform CPR on him. At this point, I was so confused I didn't know if he was truly having a convulsion or if he had some how choked on something. But either way I was horrified.

As I laid him down on the cold sidewalk, his body started to relax. His eyes were opened and looking to the side and I kept trying to talk to him and nothing happened. I couldn't believe I was watching my two year old die right in front of me. The neighbors came and the woman, Robin, brought some towels and blankets and wrapped him in them, while I calmed down and taked to 911. Five minutes later, the ambulance came and Isaac had somewhat regained consciousness, but at this point he was so exahusted, he closed his eyes and slept. I kept my hand on his heart, which was pounding and checked his breathing which was fine.

I called Mike, and waited for him to come home to take Isaac to the hospital. The paramedics explained to me what had most likely happened, checked for vital signs and his oxygen level and asked if there was anything else they could do since I wanted to wait for Mike. Mike got home right as they left. By this time I was taking Isaac inside, and warming him up a little more. The cooler air made him feel better according to the medics, but now he was shivering so I took him inside. What Isaac had is called a 'febrile seizure.' It apparently happens to kids from six months to 5 years when they have a fever and there's a quick change in body temperature. It has almost no correlation to having seizures later on in life.

I hope to never go through something like this again. There really is nothing worse than seeing your child suffer. After the hospital, Isaac wanted pizza so we stopped by Pizza Hut and let him have as much pizza as he wanted. He's back to his same old self, but I'm still scared to death that it'll happen again. I've been praying a lot, please include us in your prayers too.