A Thrilling Paida Story of a Non-Verbal Toddler

Editor’s Comment: This case sounded quite scary at the beginning, because the two-year-old toddler who is incapable of expressing herself, had an emergency of an epilepsy-like symptom due to an actual cause of indigestion. It was a blessing that she was rescued by receiving Paida on the way to the hospital. 

Last week my younger sister came to visit with her two daughters, and stayed with us for several days. 

The girls were taken out shopping frequently, and they were fed with random food. While being in my house, they walked with barefoot and sat on the floor directly as well.  

My wife phoned me around 5:00 p.m. on the second day of their stay. She urged me to rush home because my youngest niece who is less than 2 years of age, was rolling her eyes up to white.

Five minutes later, while I was just five minutes away from the home, my wife called me again, saying that I didn’t need to be in a hurry, but took my time to drive home safely. The kid was getting better. Later I was told that she was found unconscious, her eyes started to roll up with her jaws tightly closed, hands and feet trembling. 

My wife was scared to death. She thought the child’s condition should not get so worse since she was found having a fever in the afternoon. Being afraid that the child might be choked by throw-ups or bite her own tongue, my wife wrapped a spoon with a towel to let the child bite on it.  She then took turns to slap the child’s both inner elbows. When she was working on the child’s second elbow, the kid took a long breath out, felt like that she was choked by something. 

My sister was in such a panic that she was about to head to a hospital immediately. I told her to dress the kid warm with a down jacket, and let me carry the kid. When she handed her daughter to me, she was holding the kid’s legs, so I took the child over by her torso. Since the kid was in a upright position, I suggested patting her back might make her feel better. As a result of a few paida, my niece threw up all over me. She must feel much better after spitting out all those undigested food from her stomach. 

To be safe, we still took the kid to the hospital for a checkup. The afterwards diagnosis was that the child had indigestion due to eat too much. When she drank water nonstop, she choked herself by the food when vomiting. Since she was non-verbal the time, people around her wasn’t aware of her indigestive condition when her eyes rolled up. 

Whenever I think of the whole thing, I have lingering fears: 

Should we have not done the paida on the kid’s elbows and let her take a long breath out, the consequence could be unthinkable.  

When I slapped the child’s back with her body being held upright, she was able to throw-up all the accumulated undigested food from her stomach, which resolved her symptom of rolling up eyes unconsciously. We would never think that the problem was caused by overeating; we might have worried that the family has a history of epilepsy.