News...

Since A.J. fainted last week, we went to the pediatrician yesterday. I described the latest incident, which I thought was terrifying, but she just nodded and said "yeah, yeah." She said it sounds like he has been having vaso-vagal fainting spells, just like his Grandma does. Only, he's a bit more active (like crazy active) and so he is more likely to have incidents than she was as a child. Therefore, this is relatively good news. He is just a sensitive kid, and faints when his body doesn't like what has just happened to it. We will have to live with it, but he has been given no restrictions, though I'm guessing football might not be the sport for him. Thankfully, he loves baseball, which is a great sport for him to keep playing. In the future, when (because I have no doubt it will) it happens again, we have a set protocol to follow, and everything should be fine.

1. Lay him down. This we didn't do on time on Saturday, which prolonged the duration of the ashenness and poor mental state.
2. Monitor his pulse, and do not allow him to sit up until it has reached at least 70 beats per minute.
3. Keep him seated for another 10 minutes or so, and then he may stand and walk.

Only call paramedics if he's completely unconscious for at least a minute, or his vital signs don't improve. So, hopefully, we won't be having crazy big medical bills all the time. We just have to get everyone else to not call 911 every time he hits the ground.

Now on to Levi. Surprise! He went to the pediatrician yesterday, too. When I went to pick him up from school (daycare) on Tuesday, his teacher Miss Valerie says, "This weird thing happened today."
"Oh, no," I thought.
She goes on to explain that while they were at Webby (the dance company they have come do "P.E." for the kids once a week) she noticed he was staring off into space. His friends tried to get him to come with them, even touching him. His face was completely expressionless and did not react to anything. For an entire minute. Now, he loves to pretend, but he always has that sly little grin when he's pretending. There was none of that on Tuesday.
She finishes the story with, "it made me think of the seizures that I've seen in videos." Although, by her description, I knew what she was talking about long before she said the word seizure. When we visited the neurologist for A.J. last year, he asked us about this very behavior.
So, now we get to go back to the neurologist, not exactly my favorite guy, but there aren't a lot of choices. Only, it's not for A.J. like I expected. It's for Levi. What a week. I'll update again after we have some more information on him, but that will likely be a few months. (Ridiculous, I know.) Until then, we have to keep a calendar of "spells," as the pediatrician called it, and take a picture of him when he does it. Thankfully, at least everyone we know out here has a camera phone with them basically all the time. I love my new camera, but this isn't really a reason I had planned on dragging it around all the time. I'll keep you posted on any other new, exciting, or unexpected happenings around here.
It sure hasn't been boring around our house lately.