ask: My Toddler had a Febrile (Fever-Induced) Seizure...Have You Experienced This?

I really can't imagine, Alison. A friend of ours experienced the very same issue with her one-year-old daughter about six weeks ago. Her daughter's lips turned blue and her eyes rolled up in her head. My friend said while she was on the phone with 911, her husband gave her daughter mouth-to-mouth. After a trip to the emergency room, doctors said the cause of the seizure was an infection (which caused her temperature to spike) Needless to say, my friend had a difficult time heading to work for the next few days and lost a lot of sleep. I will definitely pass the Mayo information along to her. It may ease her mind a bit.

I know of two people who had this happen to them. Similar stories to your. Very scary! I am so glad he is doing better now.

I'm so happy to hear your son came out of the seizure! Our older son had a number of high fevers when he was a toddler, that came on without warning, and we made a few trips to the emergency room to have him iced down. To this day, even though he had a few repeats during adolescence, we still don't know what triggered the spikes.

It's very scary when your child is going through something traumatic and you feel totally helpless. That helpless feeling doesn't go away any time soon, either!

I hope all in your family are resting well, now.

How frightening. I am so glad to read he is ok now. As a parent of toddlers, I would have been frozen with fear. And 20 rings for 911? Unacceptable.

I was unaware that these seizures could be caused by a spike in fevers with children. I'm glad I read this. I hope none of my kids ever experience this but it's good to have in the back of my mind.

I hope all is well again!

I experienced this a few times, according to my parents, when I was younger. I've always been a "fainter" whenever I'm sick with a nasty virus or have a high fever, even as an adult. But the last time I actually had a seizure caused by fever, I was about 12 years old.

I'm so thankful that I haven't had my kids experience this -- don't know what I'd do. I'm sure I'd be out of my mind. Please let me know how your son is doing (and you too!).

As I read your story, I felt it was me telling it. I went through the exact same thing with my 14 month old daughter. It took 10 rings for 911 to answer and when the ambulance arrived, my daughter was crying. I was at the emergency room several hours before I was told it was a febrile seizure.
The whole experience was very frightening and I don't care how common they say it is, I don't want to ever go through that again with my daughter.

I just experienced the same thing. Our 14month old son was going through a slight stomach flu - BUT NO FEVER - EVER. His lips turned blue, eyes rolled back and he went limp for about 30 seconds. Called 911, same thing, by the time they got here he was fine. HOwever, two days later we had the same thing happen and he passed out, took him to ER - was happening every 30 to 45 min, 30 sec ea, while he was hooked up to the monitors. We found that right before he would go into them he would start smacking his mouth, like his lips were going numb. Followed by the blue lips and glassy eyes, limp body. The monitors showed that he was still breatheing but his oxygen level was low - would drop to 70 and even went down to 40 at one time (scary). Heart rate was fine. As soon as he went into one we would just move him around a bit and get everything going again. (Talk about scary each time cause you never know if they are going to come back to ya) This happened about 6 or 7 times while we were in the ER. Once at ICU we has a spinal tap, blood work, EEG, MRI -----all check out wonderful. As soon as we checked in after the spinal they put him on seizure medicine which has worked for us so far. He is currently on, after three days, Topamax 15mg. Twice a day. He has never had a cold or temperature his whole life and now all of a sudden this. Maybe a fluke, definitly related to stomach flu. Can't say. He will be on this medicine for at least 6months. He is on medicine because it wasn't just one day we had this experience but as mentioned before he had this happend two days later several times. I hate him taking anything but once you experience seeing your child look as if he was dying you'll do anything to make sure that never happnes again. Hope this helps someone. This is still new to us............

My son had a febrile seizure a year ago...I sympathize with how scary it was. He was blue and laboring to breath, after the seizure. The police officer who arrived first had oxygen but not the proper tubes for an infant; all he could do was hold the oxygen in front of him.

Anyways, I found your posting because once again he has a fever, so I'm in hyper-alert mode. No more seizures since that one, but my wife and I have practically become experts in managing fevers (alternating tylenol/motrin every 3 hours, baths seem to bring fevers down, but make it spike once they're out, cool washcloths, or in a crisis, ice, under the armpits and groin...whew). He gets fevers pretty frequently, but the level of stress has never diminished. It was the scariest day of my life; no question.

The worst thing is people who know of them and say, "oh, they're common," or "they're harmless." Let them witness one and then say that. I get that they're most often harmless, but nonetheless....they're horrifying.