"Episodes"

A weekend away camping, 3 nights spent in the wilderness (well OK at a little camp ground on a trout farm) relaxing right?

Well at least it was until Lil Miss had what I refer to as one of her little episodes.

Having been born 6 weeks early Lil Miss had a rough start requiring her to spend over a month in the hospital before her early release. One of the major issues was apnea and bradycardia. Essentially she would stop breathing and her heart would crash for no apparent reason.

Scary huh? What was worse was being released early from the hospital with that kind of issue being told she should grow out of that by the time her due date hit. If only that had been the case.

For years I would just keep bringing her back to the pediatrician with the same thing. She keeps turning blue.

I wonder if they thought I was being paranoid because Lil Miss's twin brother had passed away? I questioned that too at points, but I wasn't the only one noticing her severe discolourations.

Of course we had the ECG and the echo cardiograms, but no cause was ever found as to what could be causing the bradycardia.

We got to a point where they actually told me unless she is going blue at least 3 times a week there is no point in conducting any further testing and I was dismissed.

Now it's not like it happens that often and in fact we had not had any MAJOR episodes for a little over a year. That is until yesterday.

Yesterday she was playing, not even running that much when I noticed her lips starting to go blue.

She wasn't out of breath or anything so I was just watching her. She started becoming very agitated and throwing a bit of a tantrum when it was apparent she was getting worse. Her arms and across her back were purple as well as her face and lips. I immediately checked the colour of her tongue which was thankfully normal and then her hands and feet. The hands and feet were ghostly white.

I just held her in my arms and talked gently to her to calm her down and kept checking her tongue (if that goes blue I would need an ambulance) and got my friend who is a nurse to come check her out. Her pulse was fine (up to 80, so still on the low side) by this point and she was beginning to self recover.

She hasn't had one that bad in a long time. Not to that degree anyway....

This is something I have been dealing with since day one with Aliya, I was grateful I had a medical professional with me.

It started again an hour later. (she self recovered that time too)

Not one "episode" like that in over a year and then bang 2 in one day.

It really made me wonder though, how often is this really happening? What happens if she has a really serious one and I don't catch it?

I am going to go to my Dr. this week and demand she get sent to a pediatric cardiologist. I am not going to let those blinking Dr.s make light of this. It's not like she hasn't had this since she was born, why won't they run some tests to find out what is causing her heart to crash like that.