Holding of the breath

Well, for me, this is a mixed emotion post. On the one hand, there is relief. On the other hand, there is still concern. Somewhere between those hands is just pure concern and worry.

Until now, all of Kale's "episodes" with holding his breath have been related to when he falls and knocks his noggin. Not anymore. Yesterday, he got really mad at me. He got a chocolate milk container out of the trash. I held his hand as we walked back to the trash can and put it back. I went to get a paper towel to clean up his mess (made as he ran away from me with the container...proof that he thought he had something he wasn't supposed to have).

I turned around to find him digging once again in the trash can. He found the container and was not happy when I took it from him and put it once again in the trash. I told him "No" and he took off crying across the kitchen. Our kitchen is U-shaped, so I knew he would eventually coming back to me. He got to the sink and I realized that he had cried really loud and that he had stopped. When he turned around, he let out a little cry and took two steps before stumbling towards the oven. As he bounced off the oven, I realized what was happening. (Remember, this is all happening over about a 5 second span of time. I reached for him as he headed toward the floor. I thought I caught him in time and immediately stood up with him. I started talking to him and telling him to breathe. He kept his eyes open and "was there" the entire time, but at one point his eyes were about half closed. I knew I had to keep them open. I sat down with him because I was feeling a little weak myself and we rocked. It was nap time so he was already a little drowsy. I didn't want him to immediately fall asleep so I walked outside onto the deck with him.

When I was sure he was mostly ok, we went in to change his dirty diaper (which was where we had been headed before everything went wrong). We then went back onto the deck to wait for Ep to get home (I knew he should be getting back home just any minute).

Ep arrived a few minutes later and we inspected Kale again. His nose was brusing or looked red in places. It wasn't crooked by any means. Ep held him and Kale was not happy when he tried to put him down. So, I put away groceries while Ep and Kale laid down for naptime with a bottle. After Kale was long asleep, I inspected a little more. Even though his nose never bled outside of his nostrils, it looked like ther were small smudges of blood in his nose.

So, now we are caught in the cross hairs of relief and frustration and concern. Its a relief in a wierd sense, because this has always happened just after he would hit his head and never any other time. We were concerned it might be a wierd form of a seizure. I guess it still could be. Who knows. Now we know its truly from him holding his breath...but we don't know if its voluntary or some strange form of a short circuit in his body somewhere. He is too young to understand the words "don't hold your breath!" yet we still yell/tell him to BREATHE when he has one of these episodes.

No matter what, we plan to completely swamp his cardiologist about it this week during our appointment. We expect to find some sort of answer and for someone to help us. The clinic is in the hospital, so if we don't get some kind of answers then I might just camp out with him at the hospital until someone does help us! Ok, that might be stretching it...but well, I might.

I swear that everytimes this happens, my body goes through minor shock. I know I am not the only one in the house that feels this way. I think I age five years everytime it happens.