Monday, May 14, 2012

The scare of my life



On Friday after school the princess went home with a friend and stayed the night. Saturday afternoon I picked her up, and off to my godsons birthday party her, her brother and I went. She was a little more clingy than normal but I didn't notice anything off about her and she played with the kids like she normally would.

But that night sitting down talking with her dad we noticed that the right side of her mouth wasn't moving when she talked. We thought she was purposely talking out of the side of her mouth, after a few minutes we noticed her right eye was a little droopy and wasn't blinking either. The longer we looked at her the more concerned we both became. In all honesty though I'd never heard of a 10 y/o having one she looked like she had, had a stroke. She said she felt fine but there was definitely something not right going on.

Not having any idea what could be wrong, we decided the best course of action would be to take her to the emergency room just to be safe. Because of the type of symptoms she was having they got her in very quickly, and though he doctor determined in the first few minutes that she most likely had Bell's Palsy they still had to run the full gamut of test for the stroke protocol.

After 4 of the longest hours of my life she was officially diagnosed with Bell's Palsy and prescribed steroids, has to wear and eye patch to bed and use eye drops to keep her eye moist since she is unable to blink on that side. They have no idea what may have caused this, especially since she has had no illness in the recent past. They do want her to follow up with a neurologist even though all the tests they ran at the time came back clean. The doctor at the hospital assured me that she would be ok and shouldn't have any long term complications from this. It will probably last a few weeks to a few months, and will gradually get better till it is gone.

But I have to admit I'm still scared. I know from everything I've read she's 99.9% likely to be absolutely fine, and it's something that just happens sometimes. But I also know it's not all that common in children and it usually happens after some kind of viral infection, head trauma, or other illness. She's had nothing wrong with her recently except for this. It's just super scary when you have a perfectly healthy child suddenly have something like this happen. I can only begin to imagine what parents with kids far worse off than mine go through, and my heart goes out to them even more if that's possible.