It All Started With a Baseball Game

Today's Ingedient is, Aaron's first episode.

The day things changed from, eh, maybe he's a bit delayed to oh my God our world has just been turned upside down, they changed quickly and drastically.

We began the day at a little league baseball game. Aaron was running around laughing and playing, enjoying the sun.

Go maroon!!!! Woo hoo, base hit! Our team is winning.

I see Aaron stop and notice he's talking to one of the mother's from the team. I use the term talking, loosely, as even at three, he still wasn't really forming too many words.

Genna is happily sitting on my lap, content to just watch what everyone else is doing.

She was such a good baby. Always so easy-going.

After the game was over we said our goodbyes and headed home.

We lived about an hour from the field so we turned on the music and hit the highway.

Turn it up, mama!, Aaron hollers from the back.

Up goes the radio and he begins to bop along to the song.

Suddenly everything goes quiet: like deathly quiet.

I turn around to check on the kids thinking that maybe they fell asleep. But that doesn't make any sense, Aaron was just chattering away a minute or two ago.

When I see my son, I can not comprehend what is happening.

He is sitting motionless in his carseat. His head has drooped to his chest and he is drooling out of one side of his mouth.

His eyes seem to be almost half open but vacant.

Aaron! Aaron! I holler.

AARON!!!

I'm now screaming at him from the front seat.

There is no response,  just that vacant stare.

Pull over!!!! Oh my God, pull over.

My husband pulls over and I grab Aaron out of the car.

All I can figure is he must have gotten some candy from that mom at the game.

He must be choking. 

Once I have him in my arms, I can see he's not choking but his body is limp and he is completely non responsive.

I lay him on the grass and try to get him to "wake up".

Aaron! What is going on?! Aaron, wake up!

Nothing.

This is a time before cell phones so calling for help was not an option.

From where we were parked on the side of the road we could literally see the hospital.

We toss him back in the car and speed into the emergency room.

Aaron is still not responding when the doctors take over.

Not to light. Not to sound. Not to pain.

But he is breathing albeit shallow breaths. Thank God he is at least breathing.

I am absolutely beside myself. I have no idea how to help my baby; the doctors don't either.

They end up throwing a bunch of medication at him all the while making it very clear that they don't know what's wrong or if he will ever wake up.

Then come the questions.

Not just the normal, name, age and birthday questions but...

What kind of drugs do you have in your home?

Where did this sore come from?

How do you discipline your child?

Ummmm, excuse me? You think we did something to cause this?

You think we abused him or DRUGGED him?

Go ahead, test him for drugs please!

Figure out as quickly as you can that you are moving down the wrong road here.

Rule us out so you can start figuring out the right things to rule in.

And test him they did.

They checked this kid for every single drug they could think of and guess what,  they did find drugs in his system; all the drugs they had pumped into him to try and wake him up.

But not one single drug that would have come from us or that would have caused this- whatever it is.

"Huh, well now we're stumped."

"If you didn't cause this, we have no idea what did."

We would hear this over and over AND OVER for years.

"We have no idea what is going on with your son."

The good news is Aaron did come out of this event.

About the time the doctors transferred him by ambulance to the Children's Hospital in the cities, he was waking up and coming back to us.

The bad news is that since the doctors at the new hospital had not seen him at his worst and had gotten no help from the previous hospital, they took a wild guess and went- uhhhhhhhh, he must have had a seizure.

He was fine- then not fine- now fine again; yep, seizure it is.

Here's some seizure meds.

Take him home and give us a holler if it happens again.

Aaron was awake, but back to normal wouldn't come for days.

I remember watching him walk right by us to go out and sit in the car.

When I would follow and ask him what he was doing, he just looked around as if he had no idea where he was or how he got there.

Little did we know the struggles Aaron would endure going forward; the number of medical emergencies we would have to get him through or the countless doctors who would throw up their hands and say "we have no idea what is happening with your son"

I remember seeing a commercial once when I was a kid for the emergency number 911.

I thought, huh, that's cool and all but I'll never need to use that.

Holy cow, with this child, we have needed them on speed dial.