Out of the blue, my new (to me) van started messing up, followed by Derek's car (mustang)...days apart, mind you. Back in February we bought a 4-door Taurus with the intention of it being for Derek. THREE days later, on our way to Avery's birthday party the engine blew. So the car has been sitting in our driveway until we were ready to get it fixed. Derek finally decided to sell the mustang that he has been driving when the clutch went out...got the Taurus to the shop, paid for it to get fixed, only to get a phone call that what we THOUGHT was wrong is actually only a small part of the problem. We are currently waiting to see if it can be fixed without costing us another $800. So, we are back to being a one car family, with D bumming rides to work, which is really frustrating for him.
On top of this, the landlords foreclosure of the duplex we live in has started to move forward after being on hold for awhile...meaning we have to move...nowish. By the way...in this area, there are NO HOUSES for rent under $800/m with three bedrooms. It is INSANE. Why is it so dang difficult?! When did the rental prices for homes go up so much in this area?? The plan is to move the week of September 10th, so I have a lot of packing to do...and a lot of searching to do for a new home. :-/ I am also finishing up classes at UOP, and starting back at NWACC on Monday. This, I am super excited about. I have wanted to go back for a while but had to file an appeal, which was granted. Lets just say that NWACC is MUCH cheaper than UOP.
All of these "life stressors" and then Sunday night happens....
We had a really good weekend. Not too stressful, fun, hanging out with some friends, a BBQ...and the kids were actually not too rowdy. Avery had a lit bit of a fever Sunday night, so I figured that she was getting an ear infection, because she is rarely feverish. We put everyone to bed, Derek and I talked for a little while and then he went to sleep and I went into the living room to watch T.V. Around 12 Avery started crying so I gave her some more Tylenol and she asked for Derek, so I took her in our room and I went back to the living room. The boys have this metal bunk bed, and when they move around it make a pretty distinctive sound. Around 1:00, maybe a little before it started storming...but soon after I heard this LOUD banging against metal...the sound was fast and REALLY hard. It was loud enough to wake Derek up from his snoring in the back of the house.I immediately jumped up, but tripped over the blanket in my lap at the same time that hear D barreling down the hallway towards the boys room.
When D walked in Landen was laying down, with his eyes open and his arms kind of stiffly in the air and shaking a little back and forth. He kept saying "Lando! Are you alright, buddy? Landen?" It was like he wasn't even awake, but he kind of was. After a couple of minutes of Derek saying "What's your name, buddy? Do you know where we are? How old are you?" Lando finally answered "Laaaaannnnden," held up 5 fingers, and kept saying "I want to go home. I want to go home!" which we thought was odd. We kept saying "Buddy, you are in your room! See, bubby is sleeping on his bed. You are on your bunk bed buddy, in your robot room. Did you have a bad dream?? We are right here buddy"....thinking that if we assured him he would realize where he was. We stayed in there for about ten minutes watching him as he...fell back asleep? Woke up?? I'm not quite sure. I kept asking D if I should call Kids Care, which is the triage for Dr. H, but I tend to over react so we decided against it. It kind of seemed like a night mare...but a REALLY strange one. While we watched him his little hands were on the outside of his black comforter, so I could see his pale skin really well. I noticed that his hands were trembling every few seconds. Derek took him to bed with him while I turned off everything. To say we had a long night was an understatement.
Monday was such a crappy day in general. We were tired, Avery was sick, Jax had a runny nose and was cranky, and Landen was tired too. I got Avery in to see the NP, Julie, at 11:15. Derek and I were obviously thinking the same thing, because he called me and said "Please talk to them about Lando." Julie checked Ave, who has an ear infection AND Strep, and Jax, who also had strep, and Landen, who was fine. I asked her about the night before and if we should be worried. She came back in with his chart and did some tests with him, and then asked us questions "Has he had any behavior changes? What are his sleeping patterns like? Has anything like this ever happened before? Has he ever had a head injury?"
I answered her questions in order. "Landen has always been a really easy kid, until he started Pre-K. He has always been good natured and even in preschool he was always his teachers favorite because he was so sweet. Around the time that he started pre-k he became pretty stubborn and sometimes agitated...but we have thought that was just his age. He was the youngest in his class..." Then, his sleeping pattens, "He has always been my best sleeper! He will say 'I'm tired' and go to bed on his own, before the other kids. He sleeps a little later too. Sometimes he's a little hard to wake up, but that's just Landen. He wakes up crying sometimes like he is having nightmares, sometimes crying. Sometimes he sleepwalks...and he ends up in our bed a lot. He's always been pretty clumsy, but I can not think of a head injury...just normal little boy bumps or scraped knees. I'm just a little worried because we have never seen anything like last night."
Then she drops this bombshell on me. "It could have been night terrors, but it also may have been a seizure. He's got some other things going on that could be symptoms of that.. just so we can find out, I'm going to send you to Children's in Lowell for a Sleep-Deprived EEG of his brain. It's going to be a little rough, because you will have to keep him up all night and then take him in. This will tell us if he's had seizures. If so, we will refer you to a neurologists."
Wait, what?? Children's? We just got done dealing with Children's for Jax. His brain? What could be wrong with his brain?! He's ornery, but he is SO smart. Wait..think Kailey...HAS LANDO EVER HIT HIS HEAD? No. He hasn't. Wait..what about that time that he hit his eye on the corner...was that hard enough to cause him a head injury?! He's fallen a lot because he is so clumsy. Could this be a reason that he is so clumsy? Did I miss something? What if what we thought were nightmares were something more, like last night? Did we miss something? How could I not know something was going on? Are you there, God? Protect my son! Are you REALLY going to make us go through something scary again! OK..calm down. First of all, get the kids out to the car and call Derek.
At this point, I feel a bit like I am just going through the motions. I get home and the same thoughts just keep repeating themselves....and this is now day three. We keep putting Landen in our room so that we can watch him for anything abnormal. I have researched seizures in children and even watched a few videos. I'm not sure if this was a good idea or a bad idea. Seeing videos of other children having seizures at night.....this could easily be a video of Lando...it looks EXACTLY like what he has done many times. A lot of what we have read make us think that so many things that we thought were "just Lando"... aren't. The nightmares, his jerking suddenly, which we attributed to his dreams, his behavior change...his clumsiness. What if it has all been signs of something and we just never put it together?? How could we miss something like this? Is he going to be OK? Is God hearing me? Does he have a plan to protect him? Right now we are just waiting for an appointment...and praying....and worrying. So...are you there God? Do you hear me?
