A medic who arrived to provide life-saving emergency services for the author's son.

The first time it happened, I was on a run near my home. Recently, my then 5-year-old had experienced an hour-long seizure that could have ended his life if medics hadn’t brought him oxygen when they did.

When I heard the sound of a nearby siren, I dropped onto the dirt trail hyperventilating and sobbing until someone running by asked if I was OK. Their words broke me out of my panic, and I made it home.

There, I managed my son’s medical care and readied him for preschool, leashed up my dog and loaded my 3-month-old infant into a stroller. My older child’s classroom had a door on the side of the building, and one of his teachers came out to hug him when we walked up.

Then another emergency vehicle’s siren began blaring.

My body’s response was immediate – I dropped onto the sidewalk, my arms wrapped around my bent knees. “Take him inside, don’t let him see me,” I blurted out, and his teacher did.

A few minutes later, she came back to check on me, and her presence helped me pull myself together to start walking my infant and dog back home. After one block, I sat on the curb crying; I had to call my spouse, Mark, to come help us.

My child had been diagnosed with epilepsy three months earlier, but that was his first time experiencing an emergency seizure called status epilepticus. These are seizures that last longer than five minutes – and they can be dangerous. After 30 minutes, the chance of death increases. His handful of previous seizures had lasted less than one minute.

Nearly 3.4 million Americans live with epilepsy. For him, epilepsy was just his latest health condition – Mark and I had helped him through nine major surgeries, many emergency room and intensive care unit stays, and multiple infections. We had learned to manage his ostomy and perform urinary........

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