A Collapsed World.....Again

Today is the one year anniversary of Sophie's first seizure.  It was at 7am on October 23, 2009.  I was woken to words that I still hear in my head more often than I would like to admit, "Rebecca, Sophie's having a seizure."  I have never jumped out of bed so fast in my life to run to my Miss Sophie.  And there she was, having a full on tonic-clonic (grand mal) seizure.  By the time the ambulance came it was almost 20 minutes from when her seizure had started.  The most agonizing 20 minutes of my life, we had called them back asking where they were, why weren't they HERE?  They arrived soon after with all their gear and came up the stairs to see my girlie still seizing.  They took one look, scooped her up and ran with her to the ambulance.  I can still see it happening as if it was going on in front of me right now.  Those ambulance attendants were my heroes.  I rode with her, holding her hand, holding on her oxygen mask, seizing all the way to the hospital.  They were giving her med after med, and the paramedic was on the floor of the ambulance, legs braced to each side, trying to get an iv in her tiny little arm. They decided right away not to take her to Children's Hospital because it would take too long to get there.  It was a choice that would save her life because she stopped breathing shortly after we arrived at hospital and they couldn't get her intubated.  I watched her O2 sats fall to 16, she was grey and I was terrified.
 They bagged her for what seemed like a long time and worked and worked and finally got her intubated.  Those ambulance attendants stayed with us for hours while the dr.'s worked on her to get her seizure stopped and get her breathing.  They waited until she was ready and took us to Children's with the transport team that had arrived to escort her there.
Her seizure had lasted about an hour and 15 minutes (not her longest to date), she was intubated and in critical condition.  We were finally able to wean her off some oxygen after a couple days because she was attempting to breathe on her own, she was extubated after 3 days and in an oxygen tent.

How did we get to this place?  How could her world be thrown into such mayhem when her birth seemed like the worst it could get?  This last year has been so difficult for her,  I really don't know how something so little can go through so much.  But that is Sophie.  She amazes us every. single. day. 
Have you ever had days that were the worst day of your life, but the luckiest as well?  I have had 2 of those now.  The day Sophie was born the ambulance attendants decided to take me to St.Joe's (which we lived 2 blocks from). That would normally never happen in an emergency.  I was told later I would not have survived the trip to the new Vic. (a hospital with an ER)  because I had lost so much blood.  There was a long chain of events that followed that was so out of the ordinary, but made it so that Sophie and I are here today.
The same happened with Sophie's seizure. It is not protocol to take 3 1/2 year olds to anywhere other than Children's by ambulance.  But they made a judgement call and it was what kept her here with us.  The ER dr's had this little cheater board that they laid beside her body, it told them all they needed to know, doses and weights etc. for a child.  They said they rarely work on children in emergencies, but they were so amazing, I had trouble believing it ;)

Sophie has had many more ambulance rides, 7 to be exact, since that first one 1 year ago today.  She goes into status epilepticus for many of her seizures which means that they go on for a long time and she does not come out of them by herself.   We are now finally getting her seizures more under control, we have not had an ambulance ride since April and I would like to keep it that way.  Her seizures are now shorter and we are able to deal with them at home if she doesn't require oxygen.  My dream is for them to be gone. Period.  I hope one day we will see that dream realized.