Hospital Dash After Febrile Convulsion

Our trip to Amsterdam took a dramatic turn yesterday with a mad dash to the hospital after Mrs T had a convulsion.

It was one of the most frightening experiences I have had….for a moment I thought we might lose her.

She started off the day a little bit jaded but still well enough to chuck most of her breakfast on the floor. She spent the early afternoon asleep in her buggy as we wandered around Amsterdam. When we got back to the hotel room, her fever had got worse and she was crying and whimpering. I took most of her clothes off, gave her a bit of food and Calpol then just held her against me. It was then I realised something was not right. She went very quiet, her breathing felt very shallow and then her eyes glazed over and I thought her legs had started to shiver (I later realised it was the beginning of the fit). Cal immediately grabbed her out of my hands and ran out of room and into the lift shouting for people to call a doctor.

In a blind panic, we got down to reception where Mrs T vomited all over Cal. He kept shouting for someone to call an ambulance and if anyone was a doctor. An English woman came over and took Mrs T and told us it was probably a fit. We sat down and although I was much calmer than Cal, I looked at Mrs T’s normally alert and blushed face to see she was pale, her hands and lips were clenched and her eyes unresponsive. As you can imagine, I was petrified! All sorts of things were going through my mind. She looked so helpless. Was it meningitis? Some weird fatal illness? I was terrified she would never come around.

Thankfully, the ambulance was soon there and it looked as though she was beginning to come out of the fit.

The staff at the hospital and the paramedics were brilliant, putting our minds at rest straight away.
It turns out convulsions like this can be common in young children when they have a fever as they can’t regulate their own body temperature. It is also more likely to happen if there is a history of it in your family. As it turns out, Mrs T ‘s Aunty L also suffered from similar convulsions until she was five years old.

After a couple of hours, Mrs T was almost back to normal. The doctor gave her some paracetamol and checked her over. She just wanted to be held in my arms- like she was a little baby again. To help cheer her up she got a teddy bear from the paramedics for being such a brave little girl!

I was so delighted when she finally smiled again, looked around at the hospital lights and doctors and went back to grabbing things again. I am also really glad that we were in a country where everyone speaks English when it happened for the first time. It made getting an ambulance and communicating at the hospital a lot easier.

Seeing our precious little daughter so helpless was a hugely scary experience but it is comforting to know it is a lot more common than I imagined. It is called a Febrile Seizure or Convulsion. A childhood condition that occurs when they have a fever. They usually only last five minutes. There is not much you can do when they have a seizure other than make sure they don’t choke. If it is their first one, you must, like we did, take her to hospital.

Mrs T still has a fever so we are constantly monitoring her, taking her temperature and giving her paracetamol every six hours. She is basically getting a lot fuss. I just hope she gets better soon.

Here is Mrs T after we got back from the hospital to the hotel with her new teddy.