Rockin' Ralstons: "I need you to come right now. We've called an ambulance."

I was at the school, sitting in the carpool line to pick up Zoe when I got the dreaded phone call. I think it was the school secretary that called me. When I answered the phone she started with, "I need you to come over right now. We've called an ambulance." What?!

She quickly and briefly explained that Zoe had been in her class when she all of a sudden started to shake really bad (think really really bad shivers, almost convulsions) and she went stark white. Her wonderful teacher saw it happen, grabbed her and rushed her to the nurse. The nurse started taking Zoe's vitals and they were all off. Specifically, her oxygen was really low (normal is around 99 and hers was at 82). That's when they called the ambulance.

I am so glad that I was already at the school. I zipped over to a parking spot, grabbed Zane in the car seat, and ran into the school. Some time during the parking and running, Mike called. All he said was, "I'm on my way". They had called him too. As I was rushing into the school, I saw the secretary going from car to car telling them that they needed to move because an ambulance was coming. An ambulance! For MY DAUGHTER! By the time I got into the school and saw Zoe, she was shaking SO bad, was so pale, her body was stiff (probably from the shaking), had a fever (103), and her vitals were still really off.

When I got to Zoe I wanted to lay down next to her so that she could feel my whole body protecting her. I needed to do it. But there wasn't any room on the bed. So I got as close to her as I could so that she could sense me. She was alert. But she was kind of in freak out mode. I kissed her and rubbed her back and held her hand. A few minutes later, the shivering and shaking stopped and the vitals all returned to normal all of a sudden. Just like that. He fever was still almost 103 though.

Then the paramedics got there. Where was Mike? I needed him so bad. I knew he was close by though and would be there soon. The paramedics were so nice and wonderful with Zoe. They got her moved to the stretcher, out of the school, and into the back of the ambulance. I will love these guys forever because they let me ride in the back of the ambulance with her. Sometime during all of the getting onto the stretcher stuff Mike arrived. He took Zane, and they followed the ambulance.

During the ambulance ride, Zoe was extremely tired and SO scared that she'd have to get a shot. (she did have to get a shot once we got to the hospital and she did great!)

By the time we arrived at the hospital, her vitals were normal still, except she still had a fever. The doctor took blood ("lots and lots of sweet, sweet blood" (Zoe's words)), took a urine sample, did a chest x-ray, swabbed for the flu, poked and prodded to check for anything that could have caused such an episode.

Well, it turned out to be a UTI (and it looks like she is a little bit anemic).

It's so crazy how fast it all happened and that all of that happened for just a UTI! She was just fine when I sent her to school yesterday morning and she was not having any symptoms. The doctor thinks that it was just kind of a perfect storm and that the infection got into her blood so fast, making her fever go up really fast and that's what caused all of the shaking and crazy vitals.

Mike had called Phil and Viki at some point and they came rushing over and took care of Zane at the hospital for us. And then they brought us dinner after we got home. We are so blessed to have them living so close to us!

We were at the hospital for about 5 or 6 hours. Zoe is still running a fever and sleepy but she is on medicine so hopefully she'll get better really quick!

Thank goodness her teacher recognized that something was wrong and rushed her to the nurse. And I'm so glad they called the ambulance. It was so scary for me and Mike but Zoe thinks it was all pretty cool. I'm sure she'll be excited to tell everybody about it all from her point of view (ambulance ride! hospital visit! got to eat a Popsicle in the hospital! had her own TV in her hospital room! got to see her skeleton on the computer!). :)

I, on the other hand, hope that we never, ever, ever have to do this again!