The Scariest Day of My Life


Finally, the day came when the temporary housing was available and we could all be together again. We were very fortunate that the condo in which we were staying was located on the Isle of Palms, which is a beach area on one of the barrier islands just outside of Charleston Harbor. This gave us an opportunity to find a house, while playing a little. Unfortunately the few months we were there were in the middle of the winter…but winters in Charleston are mild, and Dennis was able learn the fine art of surf fishing.

Dennis still had a few loose ends to tie up in Richmond so it was decided that he and Ben would come to Charleston with all the essentials for the next few months and then he alone would return to Richmond for about a week. This arrangement suited me well because the daycare situation had already been established and after being away for so long, I wanted some quality time alone with my little guy.

Ben’s first day at The Charles Webb Center started without a hitch. I woke him early to leave plenty of time to drive him into Charleston, drop him off, visit a while, and drive back across the Cooper River Bridge to where I worked in Mount Pleasant . Not a problem. Life was good! I remember being so happy that things were working out so well. Ben’s situation had been decided at least for the next couple of years, I was at a job that I absolutely loved, and I could tell Dennis was excited about the possibilities for his future. This jubilation lasted for about four hours. In the early afternoon I received a call from the daycare center that Ben was not feeling well and they were concerned that he was starting to run a fever. I quickly left work to pick him up, thinking that the major change he had gone through the last few days was taking its toll on him. Once I got him home and settled everything would be fine. He just needed a little “mommy time”. I took him straight to the condo and fixed some soup for the two of us for dinner. After eating he seemed to perk up a bit, but was running a low-grade fever and I was beginning to be concerned that he might have contracted another ear infection. It had been a while since he had been sick, so all I had for him was Baby Tylenol. While we had not yet met him, we had already sent Ben’s records to a pediatrician who had come very highly recommended by our new friends at The Charles Webb Center. I called and arranged to see him the next morning; just in case..

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. We settled in front of the television to rest for the evening, and I began to think that I was perhaps overreacting because Ben fell fast asleep.

At about 10 o’clock everything changed. What happened next; I had never before seen and have not seen since. Within a matter of minutes Ben became restless, woke up, and his fever just suddenly spiked. And then it happened; the seizures. Words cannot describe the feeling of sheer terror, mixed with helplessness one feels when they see this happening to their child. I was one hundred percent sure that I was going to lose Ben at that moment. I was watching my child die. Finally, I regained my composure enough to call 911. Luckily, our condo was about a block from the local fire department where the paramedics were housed. Unfortunately, my new next door neighbor was an elderly woman who was apparently a bit of a hypochondriac. It took me a precious few seconds to convince them that I was not her, but eventually my hysteria won them over and they realized I needed help immediately. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes before they were there. They gave Ben a super dose of the Tylenol and the fever stabilized almost as quickly as it had spiked. They insisted on taking Ben to the hospital to be checked out and asked me to drive behind since they were almost certain he would not be admitted. While they returned to the fire station to get the ambulance, I called Dennis and proceeded to hysterically describe the events of the last half an hour. It must have had great impact on him, because within minutes he was in the car on his way to Charleston.

The drive behind the ambulance was very unsettling. I kept replaying the sight of Ben’s seizures in my head and each time it brought me closer to hyperventilation. I must have been a sight by the time we finally got to the hospital. The doctors in the emergency room seemed almost as concerned about me as they were about Ben. By this time he was tired and fussy, but nowhere near having another seizure. They did put him through a battery of tests and brain scans to see if the seizures had caused any damage, but everything seemed to check out fine. It is with this fact that I’m left so unbelievably thankful. Over the years I have met countless parents of children with special needs and have seen many cases where seizures left permanent consequences, not to mention the propensity for more episodes in the future. I say a prayer of thanks every time I think of this particular night because I know how different the result could have been.

It was early morning before Ben was finally released to go home. Even before we were settled in our beds Dennis came bursting through the door. It was at that point that I was finally able to release the emotions of that whole evening. It came in the form of uncontrollable sobs which lasted several minutes.

To this day I haven’t been able to figure out the timeline for that night so long ago. When I have counted forward the number of hours between my first conversation with Dennis and when he showed up at our apartment; it doesn’t add up. The speed with which he must have driven that night is just another thing that frightens me when I look back. I can’t even imagine what he must have endured during that long drive.

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One Response to The Scariest Day of My Life

  1. Jill King says:

    Oh my goodness, Ellen. I can’t even imagine how scary that was, especially to have been alone with Ben when it happened. There’s a boy in our neighborhood with epilepsy and it has been so difficult for the family. They haven’t been able to control the seizures. I can just imagine how stressful it would be to witness your child going through that. 🙁

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