The evening started fairly normally. A little after 6:30,1 noticed Isaac wasn't his usual run-around-the-house-screaming self. Listless and torpid, he was stretched out on the floor, with no interest in anything, not even in eating.
The thermometer revealed he had a fever of 102.9 degrees, familiar territory to anyone who's been a parent for more than two years. As my wife and daughter started dinner with some friends, I gave Isaac some Tylenol for the fever and whisked him to the bathtub to cool him.
The bath started as most baths do. Isaac hates baths he doesn't take with his foster sister, so when he started to cry after a few minutes, I told him it was all right and kept scooping water onto his back and chest.
And then a seizure fell over him. His eyes rolled back into his head. His head started to jerk about on his neck. His arms, suddenly rigid and locked, started to thrash about.
This was unfamiliar territory. Gone was the contented feeling of a father taking care of his child. Gone was the confidence that Isaac's fever, while a little high, was nothing to be worried about. All that was left was terror. Sheer, blinding terror.
"9-1-1!" I shouted as I lifted Isaac from the tub. "Call 9-1-1!"
In the kitchen, one of our dinner guests stifled a scream and my wife leapt across the floor to grab the phone.
I lay Isaac out on the blue cotton bath mat, and a thousand possibilities raced through my mind. Was he epileptic? Would he choke on his tongue? Was he going to die? I didn't know.
Isaac has lived with us for six months. He's active, energetic and easily distracted. He's clumsy and falls down a lot, but he seldom hurts himself seriously. He's a big kid, and solid. He's a survivor.
But as he lay convulsing on the bathroom floor, "strong" is not a word I would have picked to describe him. Instead, he was fragile, weak and very, very vulnerable.
His muscles, usually loose and limber, were stretched as taut as a bow. His back was arched and stiff as a board, and his elbows and knees were all locked tight.
His head continued to snap back and forth, while his arms and legs twitched about like grotesque clockwork.
I barely noticed my wife ask me what had happened so she could explain it to the 9-1-1 operator.
I watched my foster son closely. Isaac was pale, and he looked a little blue. Was he breathing? As my mind raced back to 1986 in search of memories for how to perform infant CPR, he gasped an instant, and relief flooded my soul, only to be choked again by a fresh wave of terror.
And on it went. Isaac would gasp, his tiny chest contorted with effort as he sucked in a lungful of air, and then he would be still again.
The EMTs arrived just as the convulsions stopped. When his eyes opened, they were cloudy and unfocused. I called his name and got no response. He had no idea where he was.
A moment later, he let out his first real cry since the seizure had started. It was high and anguished, the same noise he makes whenever he's upset. It was one of the most beautiful sounds I have ever heard.
And then we were headed out the door, riding to the emergency room in the back of an ambulance and trying to stay as calm and detached from the situation as the EMT with me.
At the hospital, Isaac was subdued but alert and when I started to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and "The Alphabet Song," he joined in.
In the end, doctors determined the convulsions had been caused by the fever. Terrifying as it was, this sort of seizure happens to one child in 20 in their early years. With the fever kept in check by pediatric medicines, and with Isaac acting more like his old self, we checked out of the hospital by 9 p.m.
Children are resilient. Isaac is back on his feet and busily running back and forth from the living room to the kitchen as fast as his toes can carry him. As I write this, Isaac has just awakened from his nap and is busy pestering my wife — "eemah," he calls her — for a snack, just as he does every day.
I wish I were that lucky. The sight of Isaac twitching in the tub is forever burned into my mind alongside the happier memories we have of playing together.
Incidents like this remind you how much you love someone. That's something I'm going to make sure Isaac knows tonight when I read him a book, brush his teeth and tuck him into bed.
And if he wants to hold onto me when it's time for me to leave, I'm not going to say no.
Copyright © 2002 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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This is a rewrite of an earlier entry.
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