The emergency room was the last place Christine Guidry expected to spend her Christmas Eve with her 2-week-old daughter, but when her new baby started seizing that was exactly where they ended up.

"The convulsions started in the car and they lasted on and off for about 10 minutes," says Guidry, who lives in Washingtonville, N.Y. "We happened to be near her doctor's office and they were still open so we raced her in. They told us not to take chances and bring her to the local emergency room."

After an airlift from one hospital to another, three days in the hospital and a battery of tests, they diagnosed the episode as a febrile seizure – mysterious convulsions in small children and infants caused by an abrupt change in body temperature. Febrile seizures can last for only a few minutes to upwards of 15 minutes or longer in rare cases. And just because they happen once doesn't mean they'll ever happen again, which was the case for Guidry's daughter.

"They never figured out what caused it, and it never happened again," Guidry says.

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