Mothers Battle Autism

About three weeks after the initial seizure, Evan had a second episode. Jenny says she had driven him three hours to see his grandparents when she noticed a "kind of stoned look on his face" as she handed him to his grandmother. "I walk into the bedroom to give Evan his bottle, and he's lying flat on the bed with his eyes rolled in the back of his head," Jenny says. "I called 911 because I knew it was happening again."

Her instinct was to put cold rags on him—a common treatment for febrile seizures. But Jenny says this one was different. "He wasn't convulsing, nor was he trying to get any breath—[there was] just foam coming out of his mouth," she says. "I put my hand on him, and I kept saying, 'Just stay with me,' because I felt like he was going. And after a few moments, I felt his heart stop."

When paramedics arrived they began CPR on Evan. "At that very moment that I watched my baby trying to get his heart started, I remember thinking, 'Why?'" Jenny says. "And then I heard this voice [inside me] that said, 'Everything is going to be okay.' I don't know how in the midst of hell that I was in that this voice [said], 'Everything's going to be okay,' and it's like … peace came over my body."

The paramedics revived Evan, but with no available helicopter, he had to be driven three hours back to Los Angeles for treatment. "In that time, he had another seizure. By the time we got to the Los Angeles hospital, he had seven more seizures within a seven-hour period," she says. Two days later, a doctor diagnosed Evan with epilepsy. "[The doctor said], 'There's got to be someone with seizures on your side of the family.' I said, 'No, actually I know every branch. I know what's going on. There's nothing. No one [with] epilepsy," she says. "And they discharged us."