We were at Karen's parents' house in North Orem for the evening. About an hour after she should have had the bottle, her temperature was up to 103.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Karen again force-fed her some Tylenol, and soon after we noticed that Lauren's heart was racing. We could feel it pounding inside her chest. We started talking about taking her to the emergency room, and decided we'd give the Tylenol a few minutes to see if it would calm her heart and fever. While this was going on, I was making a roast beef sandwich with mustard as I hadn't eaten any dinner. I had scarcely taken one bite when Karen realized that Lauren wasn't breathing, her eyes were glazed over and rolled towards the back of her head, and she was starting to turn blue.

She was having a small seizure. She didn't shake visibly, but she clamped down hard with her jaw. She vomited and it came out her nose, so we laid her on her side on the ground, then pried her teeth open enough to let the vomit out her mouth. She started coughing and was breathing again. While all this was happening, Karen's mom dialed 911 and an ambulance was dispatched. My dad was on his front porch trying to calm baby Spencer Wikle down and saw the ambulance and fire truck arrive at my in-laws' house, so he sent Jordan over to see what all the commotion was about.

By the time the ambulance arrived, Lauren was breathing again, and had just stopped biting down hard. She was very unresponsive to everything around her, even the first finger prick the paramedics administered to get a blood sugar count. We decided to have her go to the hospital in the ambulance in case the seizure restarted.

It's too late to make a long story short, but the rest of the story is about us at the hospital for hours doing tests that Lauren hated. The poor nurses had a devil of a time getting a needle into a vein for a blood sample. The urine sample was equally unpleasant to retrieve, if you get my drift. They also took a chest X-ray to ensure that none of the vomit had entered her lungs. After all was said and done, they said the seizure was most likely nothing more than a result of a fever with a fast rising temperature.

We left the hospital and went to pick Melanie up, who was soundly asleep had Karen's parents' house. Lucky for me, someone had put my roast beef sandwich in the fridge, so I got to finish my dinner after all. We didn't get home until 3:30 a.m. but that didn't stop Lauren from getting up early to play with her new stuffed parrot, Pepo, that the ambulance crew gave her. I wish I could figure out why she thinks we need to be awake while she plays with Pepo.