First, a not-so-brief history of the events leading up to our first hospital visit.

So, most of you know this story in bits and pieces, but here's as thorough a history as I can recall.

The kids were finishing up their Mid-winter break on the morning of Friday, February 24th. I went to work as usual, at about 6am with the kids still sleeping. At about 9am I got a call on my cellphone, which I missed, and then my work phone rang right away. I figured it was the kids. It was Madelyn who told me that Max was crying that his head hurt and I could hear him in the background. I knew something was wrong. Max had been diagnosed with probable migraines back in November and as a precaution, we had had his tonsils removed, hoping that would help. I told Madelyn to give him some ibuprofen and I'd be right home. I got home within about 5 minutes and Max was lying on the floor in the livingroom holding his head. I asked him how bad it was and if he felt sick. He said it hurt reeeally bad and
that he felt like he might be sick. We went to the bathroom just in case, and pretty much right away he started throwing up. Once he started he couldn't stop, and we ended up camped out in the bathroom. I called Matt right away and asked him to come over, as he has a way of calming the kids down when they are stomach sick (I tend to panic a bit). We ended up sitting in the bathroom for the rest of the morning with Max throwing up about every 10 minutes. At one point he said he couldn't see, which just freaked me right out! We called the doctors but there was no way we would be able to take him in, as he was completely exhausted and needing to stay by a toilet. We gave him sips of broth and Sprite to try to keep him from dehydrating. By afternoon, his bouts of nausea had slowed to about a half hour, so we packed the kids up to go to Matt's, as it was his week to have them. Max continued to be sick, although less frequently throughout the weekend. By Sunday he'd stopped throwing up, but was still very "spacey" and tired.

Max stayed home on Monday, and had a doctor's appointment that day. They did neurological tests and initially said it seemed like a classic migraine. However, we thought different, knowing Max and knowing that migraines didn't usually last 4 days. There is a headache specialist at the clinic where Max's doctor is, and he suggested we get an MRI. They scheduled it for Thursday and sent us on our way with migraine medicine.

Tuesday, I believe Max attempted to go to school, but the school called me at about 10 to say that Max wasn't feeling well. Wednesday he tried to go to school, but again came home after a couple hours. Both days, he came home and went straight to bed and basically slept for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. Thursday was the MRI, so we sent him to school with the understanding that he would be picked up at about 11 for his appointment that was scheduled at noon. Matt picked him up from school, took him out for a burger and we all three met at the MRI office.

The MRI seemed to take forever, and I, for one, was getting a little annoyed, but figured I had miscalculated how long an MRI takes. They finally sent Max out and told us to please wait for a little bit and not leave. We thought it was a little odd, but what did we know? Shortly, one of the tech.s poked her head out and asked us to please come back for a moment. We noticed she seemed shook up a bit. We went back to the exam room area and she stopped us just inside the door and with a shaky voice said that they had found a small clot in Maxwell's brain and that they were sending us to the Bellingham hospital right away. We were to report to the ER as soon as possible. We didn't know what to think and we were thrown into that parental panic/trauma mode. We went right out to get Max and silently went to Matt's car. At some point in this transport from the MRI clinic to the St. Joseph's ER, Max made the comment that his day had just gotten interesting. Leave it to Max to see the excitement in going from doctor's office to ER as "interesting".

(This is the part in the story where my memory gets a bit fuzzy as I was trying really hard to make sense of it all and stay grounded so that I didn't do anything stupid or irrational)

We walked into a fairly busy waiting room in the ER. However, once we told them who we were and who Max was, we went straight to the triage nurse. She asked a couple questions, took Max's insurance information, and we were escorted to an ER bed, where Max got to put on his first series of hospital gowns. He did, however, get to keep his pants on. The ER nurse was very nice and told us that their ER doctor would be with us soon and that she was starting an IV for Max... the kind that they could tap into should we need to get transported. (In my mind, I'm thinking... transported where? Upstairs? What's going on?) We waited there for what seemed like hours (as we found out later, the ER doctor [Dr. Bigelow] was waiting for the MRI films to get there so he could review them). FINALLY, he came and let us know that it looked like Max may have an AVM and that the best course of action was for Max to be transported to Children's Hospital in Seattle. "They" were just determining the best way to transport him down there. The options were: helicopter/airlift, ambulance, or we could drive him. Again, after what seemed like an eternity, he came back to say that, since it looked like the damage had been done on Friday and that Max seemed stable, that it was safe to have us drive him to Children's. They gave us directions and his MRI films, and told us to report to the ER when we got there. We had to jockey around to go back to the MRI clinic to get my car and stop by the houses to get whatever we needed, figuring we'd be spending the night there.

We still weren't quite sure what an AVM was or what was really wrong or what the plan was. As a parent, this is one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I didn't know what was happening or what was wrong with my son, but I had to trust that we were headed to a place that would be able to tell us what the hell was going on.

Once we had gathered our things, we set out to go to Seattle at about 3:30. I was driving, Matt was in the passenger seat, and Max was tucked in the backseat, all ready to nap his way to Seattle. I have driven to Seattle a lot in the last couple months, but by far this is, to date, the longest trip I have taken, despite the fact that we had absolutely no traffic to hassle with. We spent another 2 hours not knowing what was going on or what Max was carrying around in him that had him feeling so sick and the medical staff so urgently passing us off to the next qualified person.