The boy died just a week after his second birthday. (Representational Pic)
A woman in the US lost her two-year-old son a month after he experienced a febrile seizure. Speaking to PeopleMagazine, Lindsay Miller said she was told by the doctor not to worry about the toddler. Mason died on January 21 after having a second seizure in his sleep, said Ms Lohan, adding that she was left “numb, shocked and in total disbelief”. A febrile seizure is a convulsion in a child that’s caused by a fever. The fever is often from an infection.
Ms Miller said she took Mason to the hospital a month before he died after noticing he was getting fever.
“I noticed he was breathing really fast and I could tell he was getting a fever. And it was winter, it was December of 2022, and I knew RSV, flu, Covid was out there,” she told People.
“It was just normal symptoms. He was warm and he could tell he didn’t feel good, but there was nothing really serious. We went up to the hospital and they did all the tests and everything looked good, and they just said he had a double ear infection, we were prescribed antibiotics and we were discharged,” Ms Miller added.
The boy was running around and playing as they prepared to go home, said the woman from Oklahoma.
Five minutes later, Mason experienced his first seizure.
“He was in a stroller and I just so happened to glance down because I didn’t hear anything. I glanced down to look at him and he was in the middle of a seizure. He had started seizing and his face had turned purple and we were still in the ER lobby when that happened,” said Ms Miller.
She rushed back to the emergency room and the doctor told her it’s febrile seizure, which is pretty common in children.
They were told to come for a follow-up with the paediatrician who said the medical staff will monitor the boy for any further symptoms.
Ms Miller said Mason was fine for a month and a week after he turned two, tragedy struck at night. Ms Miller said she put Mason to bed and when she went to check him the second time, Mason was lying face down in his bed and had vomited.
“I just grabbed him and pretty much lost my mind at that moment and was screaming for my husband and our daughter was there and saw everything. And I somehow called 911 while I was running through the house with him and they were asking me if he had a pulse, and I couldn’t really tell because my heart was beating so fast when I put it on his neck, I said, ‘I think I feel something.’ But my husband was just saying, ‘He’s dead. He’s dead.’ And I was begging him to stop saying that, and my daughter was freaking out,” she recalled while speaking to the outlet.
Ms Miller said she gave Mason CPR until the emergency medical team arrived to take him to hospital where they tried to revive him for two hours. They were finally told that the boy was dead.
And the family had to wait for five months to get some answers. “We waited five months for the results to come in from the medical examiner, only to be told our child passed away from something the doctors told us was nothing to worry about,” she continues. “It didn’t make sense. The cause of death read ‘complications of presumed febrile seizure’ with a common childhood virus as the contributing factor (coronavirus HKU1). Mason had a fever and common virus at the time of death but otherwise was completely healthy per the autopsy results,” said Ms Miller.
She said she is sharing her story to help families where children suffer from this rare condition.