Cale was a chubby, beautiful, baby boy who smiled often. That October, my husband, Danny and I decided to go away for the weekend, leaving the girls with their "Granny and Papa Buff". We took Cale with us because he was still a nursing boy. We went to the Smoky Mountains and enjoyed the weekend among the fall colors. It was the last weekend of innocence for us. All was good and there were no scary thoughts in our minds that Saturday and Sunday. The pictures we took show me hugging and kissing Cale's chubby baby cheeks. I remember thinking that we had weathered the problems a new baby brought and were doing fine. The next Sunday between church and Sunday dinner at my Mom's, I noticed that Cale was reacting strange. He would jerk his head to the left, his left arm would fling involuntarily out also. He looked a little dazed and then he would smile. These episodes happened in a series of seven or eight. I was not really concerned. I just thought it was something I might need to mention to my Mom and then probably his doctor. When I showed him to Mom, she was more than a little concerned. She thought we should see the doctor immediately. Dr. Miller was at his office that Sunday afternoon and he agreed to see us. He also seemed very concerned. He wanted us to bring him to the hospital the next day for some tests. He thought it might be seizures. Still, I thought seizures would just be something he'd have to take medicine for and life would go on. I rode by the local high school on the way home to tell Danny, who was playing football with some friends. He was worried but as always, calm. That was October 30th. The next day would be Halloween. Being the crazy mom that I was, I was really worried about how the girls would go trick or treating with me at the hospital. That was not the kind of thing their dad would take them to do. So, I dressed them up that night in their costumes (Miranda was a tooth fairy, Brandy was a princess and Cale was a clown. ) and took their pictures in our living room. I called my sister Susie (who has always been there for me whenever I needed her) and asked her to take the girls with her kids out trick or treating. I told the girls that I'd be gone for a day or two but there was nothing to worry about.

By the next morning when it was time to go to the hospital, Cale was having episode after episode with little let up. When we got him checked in a room at the hospital he had an episode that really scared me. He had about ten episodes, one after another and for the first time he didn't seem to know what was going on around him while it was going on. Tests began that night and continued into the next day. He had a CAT scan, EEG, X-Ray and other tests that I didn't identify at the time. We managed through the second day and night waiting for the results to come in the next day. I knew this could be serious but I remember thinking that the really bad things didn't happen to me. You know, just mini-bad things. The bad things were reserved for someone else.