it's an emergency and you're the mom

last tuesday one of my biggest nightmares came true, my epileptic dog had a seizure that wouldn’t quit and i was home alone with my toddler.

normally hudson’s seizures last anywhere from one minute to three and a half, but if it goes longer than five minutes (which has never happened before) he needs to go to the ER to medically stop the seizure or he could die.

hudson has been having seizures for the past four years. i no longer think he’s dying every time i see him seize, but i always put on the timer to make sure we don’t get to that point.

last week he reached four and a half minutes with no signs of stopping. he bit through his lip and blood and foam splattered on the floor as he shook. i called dan over and over and over again, but he didn’t have service. upstairs our toddler was napping.

how the fuck am i supposed to get my dog to the ER.

i try calling 911, but i don’t know what i’m asking for. are there ambulances for dogs? dan calls me back while i’m on the phone with dispatch and i hang up to triage with him instead. we’re both panicked and unsure of what to do.

then i hear a wail from upstairs, my child is up.

i don’t know what i’m going to do, just that i need to do it fast. i leave my seizing dog and go to get my kid, my mind racing and my heart breaking knowing that today is the day my toddler will witness a seizure for the first time. i wish i could shield him from it all.

instead, i try to talk him through it, quickly. “hi honey, listen, i’m going to need you to be really brave, okay? hudson is sick. he’s having a seizure, which is normal, but this one is lasting too long so you and i need to take him to the doctor’s, okay? it might be pretty scary what you see downstairs. he’s bleeding. he’s peed and pooped on the floor. there’s foam coming out of his mouth, but i need you to be really brave and do what mommy says, okay? we’re going to get him help.”

i say all of this while unzipping his sleep sack, carrying him downstairs, and propping him up on a chair at the kitchen island. every second counts and i don’t know how to move any faster.

i try to support hudson’s seizing head as i push him across the wood floor to the front door, saving my strength for the stairs and lifting his eighty pound limp body into the back of my car. i don’t actually know how i manage to get him from point a to b.

once he’s in the car i run back into the house get my kid. no jacket, socks, or shoes, there’s no time. i throw him into the car and then put every ounce of focus i have into ensuring he’s safely buckled into his car seat. as soon as i drop into the driver’s seat dan is calling me back, “i just sent you the nearest animal hospital.” i count my blessings that it’s only a ten minute drive and i curse the fact that it’s a whole ten minutes away.

i’m shaking and crying and focusing on the road. i am breaking down and moving forward all at once. i’ve already told dan i don’t want hudson to die and we both know that he could. i don’t know the implications of such a long seizure or if it will be too late by the time i get to the hospital.

this dog is also my child, i can’t imagine a world without him. not ever, but certainly not yet, he’s only five.

my mind goes back to my human child, god i hate that he’s exposed to this. he’s never seen his dog collapse. hudson always seizes in the middle of the night, and for that, i am grateful.

i keep driving, focusing on the road, checking my rearview mirror to make sure that my kids are okay enough. none of us are, actually. at some point on the drive hudson stops seizing and when the nurses meet us at the car with a stretcher he doesn’t need it. tears are streaming down my face as i open the trunk and i don’t apologize as they take him in. i’ll be right there, i just need to grab my kid.

my toddler, who will sometimes go annoyingly limp when i try to carry him on my hip, immediately latches onto me like a koala. he wraps his entire body around me and burrows his head into my chest. he is comforting me more than he is scared.

my heart swells and breaks for my empathetic kid who is taking care of his mother. i never wanted to put him in this position, and yet, emergencies happen. and i am grateful that he understands the severity of the situation and that i can focus all of my attention on my first baby, hudson.

we’re in the emergency room and as the doctor takes hudson’s vitals i’m acutely aware of how my children are feeling. my dog is stunned, confused, but alive and standing on all four legs.1 his temperature is one hundred and five, apparently normal for a dog post-seizure. i try not to think what those high temps could do to his brain.

my toddler is gently but firmly hugging me, nuzzling me, comforting me. my heart is breaking. i’m supposed to take care of you, is all that i can think.

my eldest daughter heart is breaking for all of the times that i had to be a mini adult, mom junior, and a role model for my younger siblings. i just want him to be a kid. i don’t want him to feel like he needs to be the example, the perfect big kid. i don’t need him to be mommy’s helper, i just want him to be a child.

i am reeling with guilt and pride all at once for how he’s handling the situation and i wonder how scared he actually is. there’s still blood splattered all over our floor at home.

dan rushes into the doctor’s office as soon as he can and his parents are right behind him. i know they’re coming and i don’t apologize for the inconvenience. i let them be parents too.

the last time his parents rushed to the hospital for our family was for my miscarriage that the doctor’s thought was ectopic. i sat in the waiting room all day and they sat with me. they don’t ask questions because there are none, we’re on our way.

and i’m so grateful.

so grateful that i don’t need to do the emotional labor of answering the question of do you want us to come? they just show up. they know that it is always comforting to have your parents in an emergency.

in the end we didn’t really need their help, we could have handled it on our own, but that’s just who they are. they will choose the minor inconvenience of dropping everything to be together in crisis every time. the comfort of their presence was greater than any practical help they could have provided anyway.

they helped both of us calm down and regroup. they stayed and played with our child for about an hour while we cleaned up the house and gave hudson a thorough bath, and they probably went to my nephew’s hockey practice after that.

THE THINGS YOU DON’T SIGN UP FOR

earlier that week i’d seen a spread the jelly article and learned that Lake Bell has an epileptic daughter. i drank it up like water in a desert, searching for clues on how to do this, counting my blessings that it is my dog child and not my human child who suffers from this neurological disorder.

and it made me think of so many stages in hudson’s epilepsy when i’ve felt like i can’t do this.

when he had his first seizure and we thought he was dying. when we found out he was epileptic and that meant he would have seizures for the rest of his life. when he had a seizure in my third trimester and dan was out of town. every seizure he had during my son’s infancy. and now.

hudson’s epilepsy lay dormant until he was a year and a half. he was still in the overactive puppy years and i was often questioning our life choices for simply getting a dog. when we found out he was epileptic i wanted to yell at the breeder, this is not what we signed up for, nobody told us this was possible! i was still so early into being a dog mom and a small and scared part of me wondered if we could give him back.

the stress of caring for a dog with epilepsy is ever-present. he could have a seizure at any moment and if one of us isn’t there to help, he could die. when we first found out he was epileptic i felt like i would never be able to leave his side, that i would need to be with my dog every minute for the rest of his life. but eventually we got his seizures under control, they became less frequent and more predictable and i’m able to breathe when we’re apart, but i always miss him.

it might be part of the reason why i don’t worry about our child very much when i’m not with him. my kid is healthy, but my dog has a chronic neurological disorder.

we track his seizures meticulously in a Note and try to anticipate when the next one will come based on the calendar, normally they’re three to six months apart. dan also has a sixth sense about it and i’ve learned to trust him when he says he’s due for a seizure soon.

but they can surprise us. this one came out of nowhere and he hasn’t had a seizure during the day in three years. his last one was a month ago, which means we’ll be tweaking his medication again. our dog takes two pills, twice a day, everyday.

he will now be taking six.

—

i never would have chosen to adopt an epileptic dog. never would have picked him out of a lineup, and yet here we are. with two alarms on our phones so we don’t forget to give him his pills, seizure medication stashed in our car in case of emergencies, and a waterproof mattress protector in case he seizes in bed and loses control of his bladder.

he’s my kid, too.

he's the one who taught me how to be a mom. who taught me what it meant to put others before myself.

finding a way to single-handedly get my eighty pound dog and toddler to the ER was the proof i never wanted that i can handle my nightmares. i can break down and move forward at the same time. i can allow my child to comfort me in an emergency and then remind him that i am the one who takes care of him, not the other way around.

even with the things that we think are in our control, like choosing a hypo-allergenic dog from the top breeders in the country, life can surprise you. you never know what type of child you’re going to get or what emergencies will come up, you just handle it. there is no way to be perfectly prepared for all of the responsibility that comes with being a parent, you just step up to the plate and do your best.

i have replayed this potential seizure in my head a thousand times since i had a baby and knew that one day i’d have to take care of both of them in crisis, yet there is still no way i could have prepared for this.

a week later, our son keeps bringing up hudson’s seizure saying hudson was bleeding. i’m sorry. we shake our heads vigorously, there’s nothing to apologize for, you were so helpful. that was so scary, he’s safe now, you don’t need to worry anymore. and it’s true.

yesterday our vet confirmed that hudson will still live a long and happy life on epilepsy medication and there is no change to his expected lifespan — my other big fear. i blinked back tears and quickly wiped them away as he told me the good news. i didn’t apologize for them. he understood.

before he left the room he paused and looked me in the eye, i am so sorry you went through that, i don’t know how you managed all of that by yourself and got him to a hospital. not many people could have done that, you’re doing a really great job.

that’s the thing about parenthood. we don’t often have witnesses or people to tell us that we’re doing a good job. there is no grade book or annual review. you just have to trust that you’re giving it all you’ve got and you can handle any repair that comes your way. and when your kids are all grown up with kids of their own, you can be the one who shows up to take care of them without asking.

to me, to be mother curious is to explore any of the many choices, implications and unseen factors in relation to the baby question and to champion individuals in building the life they want, not the one expected of them.

the articles that follow are important essays around building an intentional childfree life, maternal mental health in entrepreneurship, postpartum and through pregnancy loss, and choosing where to plant roots for a potential family in the future. i hope you’ll take a minute to check out some of these brilliant writers!

• Mothering myself by Kayla on the grief that comes with the decision not to have children

• Slipping by Britt Simons on the anxiety of opening a restaurant while raising an infant (amongst a million other life happenings, plus stepping into a promotion)

• 01: The one that got away by Jessica Meltzer on coming to terms with wanting to leave LA for NYC and all of the dog, baby, and travel dreams that accompany the grief of leaving home

• a return to therapy postpartum by Kyla Ruddell on coming back to that one sacred hour of therapy after birthing your second child

• My second baby, my angel baby by Rachel Jain on the ectopic pregnancy that saved her life

table of contents

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Jan 14

this is a living table of contents that is updated as mother curious posts go live. MC was never meant to be digested in a linear fashion, choose what you’re looking for based on the topics below!

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