It's been an interesting couple of days.
We brought the kids to celebrate a Christmas/New year party last December 30. The day's schedule must have taken a toll on our daughter, since she had been laughing and crying most of the time (from the excitement and games).
We got home at around 8pm and the kids were half asleep, so instead of letting them eat dinner, we gave them milk and tucked them to bed.
At around 11pm, our daughter began to scream in a high pitch voice. We thought she was having a bad dream, but when we tried to comfort her, we realized she was running a high fever.
We remembered the last time when she got a high fever. Our daughter has a bad case of Febrile seizure. She usually has convulsions that last a couple of minutes and she would lose consciousness during that time. My wife and I panicked because this seizure was different, because she was screaming.
So we brought her to the emergency room in the middle of the night. She was still unconscious in the car, but she vomited everything she ate. We should have remembered the first aid remedy for such a situation (applying sponge bath and let her body cool down), but since we were both in panic mode, we just reacted.
A few minutes after we brought her to the ER, the nurses and doctors started asking us questions. We should have demanded that they start wiping our daughter with a cold towel, but we forgot. Her temperature shot up again and she had another seizure.
Normally we'd stay a couple of hours after her seizure, so the doctors can monitor her temperature and fever. But since she had two seizures, our pediatrician decided to admit her just in case she gets another attack.
So I stayed with her in the hospital for the night. My wife had to go home to take care of our one month old baby. Good thing her fever started to go down to manageable levels. By early morning, her fever was gone.
The doctors allowed her to leave the hospital and celebrate New Year at home. But she was still under medication (to prevent the fever from occurring). Since we had a small baby in the house, there was a risk of passing the fever to the infant. So my daughter and I had to sleep in another room.
It's now the first day of 2013 and everything has returned to normal. I hope it stays that way. I've been researching more about febrile seizures and how parents should handle the child when he or she is experiencing an attack. Hopefully she outgrows the condition soon.