In Which We Have An Eventful Day

Jer had a doctor's appointment this morning and while he was there I popped by the store to do some shopping. We had to guesstimate the time that Jer would be finished because I haven't gotten a new phone yet and my old one decides that it can't read the sim card periodically. Today was one of its "off" days. I finished shopping a little too soon and Connor and I had to walk around the hospital for about twenty minutes while Jer finished up, but it wasn't too bad.

One of the things I got at the store was a new collar for Loki. He broke his old collar a few months ago and I hadn't bothered to get him a new one, but with a move in the immediate future I want to make sure that he has tags on him with our contact information in addition to his microchip just in case he manages to escape. I put the new collar with the tags on him shortly after we got home.

Apparently unbeknownst to me the collar emits some sort of kitty psycho waves, because Loki spent the rest of the afternoon charging around the house at full speed, skidding to a stop bare centimeters before walls and gazing around wildly with pupils dilated to the size of nickels. He didn't attempt to paw the collar off or scrape it off on anything; he seemed to think that if he ran fast enough he'd dematerialize and leave it behind. He's dozing on the futon now, totally exhausted, collar still firmly in place.

After putting Connor down for a nap, eating some lunch, and watching Loki run around like a maniac for a while, Jer and I decided it was time to go to the YMCA to work out. This was our first time leaving Connor with the nursery. I think I thoroughly freaked out the woman we dropped him off with.

"Now the important thing to remember," I said as we were signing him in, "is that you have to check for a pulse on him before you start trying to resuscitate him. His seizures look just like cardiac arrest, which he's at risk for too, so you want to make sure you can find a pulse just in case it's his heart that's the problem. But you don't want to do chest compressions if his heart is going because you might crack some ribs."

She gave me a deer-in-the-headlights look. "Let me go get our leader for today," she said, and fled into the back room.

I gave a similar speech to the "leader" for the day, and she asked what exactly his seizures looked like. "Well, pretty much he looks dead," I said. "He's all blue and limp and not breathing, so you can't miss it," Jer added. We told her about his new symptoms to look for too-- the jaw trembling, throat paralyzation, limpness, etc. She said that she thought they could handle it, that they'd page us if they needed us, and after explaining to Connor where we'd be Jer and I left him there and took off for the pool.

We had a pretty good workout. While Jer swam laps I did some deep water running-- an activity that seems to be pretty much identical to dog paddling except that you call it something different so that it's not as embarrassing and you swim at an even slower pace because instead of keeping your hands open you have them in fists. Don't get me wrong; I can swim perfectly well, but I'd heard that deep water running is an extremely good low-impact workout and so I decided to try it out. Between Jer's extremely interesting facial expressions while he's stretching out his feet and attempting to walk in the pool and my frantic paddling and glacial pace, the people in the hot tub across the room watching us probably had plenty of entertainment. After about forty minutes or so I gave up and did the back stroke for a while. Deep water running is a surprisingly good workout-- I'm pretty sure I'll be sore tomorrow.

We packed it up after about an hour in the pool and went to pick Connor up. From what the attendants said it sounded like they basically spent the entire hour hovering over him and interpreting every little movement he made as a possible seizure. Can't say I blame them-- I do that sometimes myself. Another leader was there to meet us and we went over Connor's symptoms again with him. "The odds of the little guy having a seizure with you are very, very slim" I told them, "so I wouldn't worry about it too much. And if he's having one, trust me: you'll know."

Of course when we got home Connor waited about half an hour and then had a seizure. Figures.

This one was a pretty typical one but for one exception. For three or four minutes before the seizure really hit it was like his body didn't really want to work anymore-- he was tracking with his eyes, swallowing normally, and aware of what was going on, but he wouldn't move his arms and legs to push away a tickling or poking hand and he was totally, bonelessly limp; he wouldn't even hold his head up. I had time to get the oxygen out and ready before he passed out. Otherwise it was a very typical seizure for him-- he fell unconcious, stopped breathing, etc. He didn't get quite as blue this time because I'd already started oxygen and began resuscitating him the second he stopped breathing. We got pretty close to the two and a half minute mark with this one, though.

Surprisingly enough after he started breathing again and woke up he was actually in a pretty good mood. Normally he's extremely upset and pretty much inconsolable immediately after a seizure. We speculated that maybe it was because he wasn't as oxygen deprived this time so he didn't have as much of a headache. Who knows?

At any rate, he's asleep now and we'll leave a message with his doctor tomorrow morning to let him know that he's had another one.

Lovely.

~Jess