A couple of weeks ago we got a call to a girl seizing on a school bus. By the time that we arrived on scene the bus driver had dropped the 3 year old girl at home. The mother told us that her daughter has MS (multiple sclerosis) and a seizer disorder and that she experiences focal seizures several times a month (A focal seizure just involves a small part of the body and a lapse in awareness. In this girls case she just looked to the far right with her eyes and was unaware of her surroundings). We did a quick assessment and found nothing out of the ordinary. The mother told us that she usually doesn't send her daughter to the ER but that she would like to do so today. We loaded the girl on the gurney and the mom headed out to her car with her two other kids. So far I was thinking that this is just your average, run of the mill, seizure call.
In the back of the ambulance I was setting up to start an IV and my EMT was putting the girl on the ECG monitor when he said, "I think she's not breathing." I did a quick check and sure enough, she wasn't breathing! I told Brian to get the BVM (bag-valve-mask) and to start breathing for her while I checked for a pulse. I also asked Dan to get going code 3 to the hospital and to let them know we were coming in with a pediatric respiratory arrest. It was about this time that I noticed she was having another focal seizure. I gave her a quick shot of Versed to stop the seizure and then she started breathing again. She stopped breathing one more time before we got to the hospital but we got her breathing again just as we arrived.
After transferring care to the hospital we talked to the mother. She then told us that her daughter frequently stops breathing when she is having a seizure. Somehow she forgot to mention that when we were at her house! The nurse told us that the girl did the same thing to a different paramedic 6 weeks before and he intubated her. In the end all was ok with the little girl.
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