Life is (Not So) Good

Things were looking up for Zane as we woke up in the hospital this morning. He had a good night last night, maintaining his oxygen saturation levels on 1.5L of oxygen, and he didn’t desat at all.

Mid-morning, Zane’s personality began to reemerge. He was pretty interactive and gave me his first set of smiles since surgery last Tuesday. It was so refreshing to see his beautiful, bright face. It looked as though things were well on the way to improving.

At 10:00, I started getting things ready to move Zane out of bed. I planned to have him sit up through his feeding and watch a movie on the room’s TV. The Child Life team had just delivered some new DVDs and a recharged CD player. All seemed promising and good. But just as I was removing Zane’s pillows and leg sleeves (meant to prevent thrombosis), he seized. For at least four minutes, which is the longest seizure I have observed with him. Ever. He was beyond miserable afterward, and his heart rate spiked significantly. The nurse administered Diazepam, and he finally settled down after a half hour or so. The seizure foiled my plans to get him up; he slept for over two hours in a deep and dreamlike slumber.

He seems to be stabilized now. I notified his neurologist of the seizure. The nurse believes it happened because surgery and the after effects of it have lowered his threshold for seizures. From the sound of things during rounds today, he’ll be inpatient for at least a couple more days.