Felicity's Fainting

Poor Felicity had a fainting episode during our trip to Mama-Grandma's house in Wisconsin. We were finishing up a morning at the zoo when she said she needed to go potty. I assisted her in trying to do so, but she found no success, and moments later she went limp in my arms. I carried her out into the open, asked for first aid, and the concessions staff called 911. The hospital was just a block away, so it was a quick ambulance ride, but Felicity did take her time in coming to. After lots of poking and prodding, blood tests, urine test, chest x-ray, heart monitoring, and being admitted to the hospital for more tests and an overnight stay (which ended up not happening, except for the being admitted), the pediatrician on staff concluded that she had a simple vagal vaso fainting episode, possibly aggravated by constipation.

We went for the return-home check up with her doctor here on Thursday, and he agreed that it seemed a simple faint with no further cause for concern.

In Madison they had suggested sedating her for an Echo cardiogram, and sending her for a sleep-deprived EEG to see if she had any seizure activity going on. How you keep a 2 year old awake for 24 hours, including a 45 minute car ride to the closest participating hospital, is beyond me. Eve if one succeeded, I think I'd need to budget about a month for everyone to get back to normal after that! Felicity's had a hard enough time recovering emotionally from a day in the ER!

I've thought many times about how often I fainted as a child, and how it almost never became an occasion of discussion with our doctor, let alone going there. And the only advice we ever received was that my Mom should give me candy when I fainted. Strange to think about that now, seeing as how no one ever tested my blood sugar!