Saturday was an extremely difficult day. Mason was grieving hard after seeing
and saying goodbye to a former ayi (domestic worker) at one of his former
Healing Homes the night before. He woke up in the night calling for her and was
very grumpy the next morning, as it took a couple of hours for him to go back to
sleep. We have no idea if that was related to what was about to happen, but it
at least shows that he was already under some stress. Chris was trying to feed
Mason some apple slices for breakfast, when he threw up a little bit (He
actually vomited on himself and me BIG time the night before in the taxi on the
way to visit his former Healing Home) and was very upset and throwing fits.
I finally decided to take him upstairs in our friends' house to take a
bath. I was holding him with the front if his body against the front of mine.
After reaching the top of the stairs and entering our guest room, he had been
fussing, but then he really started to hit me before his body stiffened, with
his head pulled back. His eyes went upward and his body started shaking. He was
having a seizure! Now mind you, he has never had a history of seizures, only a
concussion from a fall that happened a month earlier, and I had never been
around a person having a seizure, and especially not my own child. I quickly
came down the starts and called for Chris and my friend, telling them that he
was seizuring and we needed help for him ASAP! I laid him flat on the carpet,
and after around 30 seconds, the seizure stopped as his entire body
simultaneously stiffened before he fell asleep. Is he sleeping? Is he
unconscious? Is he breathing? He was asleep and breathing (!), and we were
scared out of our minds. I quickly called a Baobei contact and also a friend,
who sent her driver over to our house to take us to the hospital.
We
ended up going to Shanghai United, which was about 45 minutes away in Puxi, the
other side of Shanghai, but it has American or American-trained doctors, and is
also the same hospital that saw Mason after his fall/concussion a month earlier.
Mason slept the entire way there, of which we were grateful. We kept checking
to make sure he was still breathing. We were so overwhelmed. Mind you, Chris and
I are scared, hungry (no breakfast), gross (just threw on some clothes and
glasses), and scared...again.
After initially briefing the doctor and
the nurses took their time finding a vein to take blood to check in the lab
(really...a long time, with Mason screaming the entire time), the results came
back that all of the lab work looked normal and that he would need a full
work-up to see if there's another problem somewhere (or it could be a one time
random occurrence...but they are unsure at this point). He wasn't running a
fever, and I know it's not unheard of for children to have a seizure due to the
fever, so that wasn't the cause. Since we are going to Houston with him (Yay for
awesome medical facilities in Houston!) in a couple of weeks, they said to just
wait until we get there to do the full work-up (MRI and other tests), since its
safer and more accurate in the States than in China, and he didn't seem stressed
to find out the reason that day. They did give us some tips and medicine that
will stop a seizure, should that happen again, especially since the next week we
will be in Henan province, without good medical facilities available.
An
interesting fact, though, is that a seizure isn't considered major unless fit is
more than 20 minutes in length...I can't imagine. So Mason's 30 second seizure
was pretty mild. I had no idea.
The seizure occurred around 8am, and we
left the hospital around noon. Fortunately a wonderful Baobei volunteer Noelle,
who also watched Mason for the last 3 weeks before we arrived in Shanghai, met
us at the hospital, and since she lived close to the hospital, she invited us
over for some food before heading all of the way over to Pudong again. We are so
grateful for her! Then, she allowed us to use her driver instead of a stinky
taxi, so that was also appreciated. We got home and immediately started to pack
for the next day's trip to Mason's home province, as the doctors gave the ok for
us to proceed with the adoption trip as scheduled (whew!). We were utterly
exhausted but out of time, so rest didn't happen too much for us that day.
This morning we will leave on our trip to officially begin the adoption
portion of our China trip, as Mason takes his first airplane ride to Zhengzhou
(pronounced jin-joe), Henan...One of the poorest provinces in all of China,
where we will meet up with our travel group and Chinese rep from CCAI (our
adoption agency).
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