Back in June my then almost 5 year old daughter, Crunchy, had a seizure. This was a first. She kind of zoned out and stayed that way for a while. The ER doctor expressed concern about many things--including a tumor or menigitis. After initial testing he recommended sending us to Albuquerque because services are limited in Roswell. Before the decision was made, I asked the doctor if we were over-reacting in sending her to Albuquerque (3 hours by car and about an hour in the Medivac airplane). His response was, "In 5 days, we might think so, but today I don't think we are over-reacting." We chose to airlift her. Once we got to Albuquerque, they did some tests, but they were not able to tell us why she had the seizure. I wonder if we had rushed too much. We have good medical coverage, but did we abuse it?
This week I got my answer. We weren't over-reacting. I work in early intervention. I work with kids from birth to 3 years old who have developmental delays or who are at risk for such delays (i.e. drug exposed, premature). I took a referral for a 15 month old girl. The note just said, "She had a brain tumor, Mom wants to make sure she's okay".
As I talked to the Mom, I discovered that in June (!) her daughter had a seizure (her first) at daycare. Like Crunchy, it was "absentia" (meaning she zoned out---she didn't thrash). They sent her to Albuquerque. And they found a tumor. They did surgery, and she seems to be doing very well.
But that could have been my Crunchy. We could have been the ones having brain surgery on our child.
We weren't over-reacting.
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