Back in December 2010, Jessie did have a seizure one morning while sitting on the potty before school. She was very quiet that morning, appearing sleepier than usual. When Sam stepped away to get a pull-up, Jessie fell off the potty and bit her lip. She was lying on the floor in a pool of blood and didn't even cry! When Sam picked her up, her eyes were moving rapidly back and forth, her head was turned to the right and her right arm was sticking out. Sam called me in the bathroom and after watching her, we both agreed that she was probably having a seizure. This was her first seizure since 2007. Sam took her to the ER straight away and after lots of waiting and testing, the neurologist agreed that it was probably a seizure. He did not recommend any treatment for this isolated event, but asked that we continue to watch her and call if it occured again.
Jessie did not have any more episodes like this one, but in the months that followed, she had periodic spells of "zoning out" at school and at home. Her progress at school and in therapy seemed to plateau in March, so we called the neurologist for advice. He then decided that we should have the Video-EEG testing done, but due to heavy demand for this testing in Charlotte, we had to wait 3 months for an appointment.
Sitting with Jessie in that 9th floor hospital room in the Epilepsy unit at CMC brought back memories of our visit there back in 2007 when she was just 8 months old. At that time, Jessie had been having a rare type of seizure called "Infantile Spasms", which presented as large jack-knife movements of her entire body. The myriad of electrodes and wires glued around Jessie's head were just like they had been 4 years ago, only now she had a lot more hair to navigate. I couldn't help but think that Jessie remembered that visit 4 years ago because the first words out of her mouth every time someone entered the room were either "All Done" or "Bye Bye"!
On a positive note, the testing did not reveal any seizures. While sleeping, Jessie had several "discharges" in the left parietal lobe of her brain. According to the neurologist, this type of activity is normal for children with brain damage like Jessie. It could be an indicator of seizures to come, or it could just be her "normal" activity.
It was nice to have so much time with Jessie over our 3-day visit to the hospital, but we were both glad to be discharged on June 22. And after lots of washing and brushing (and whining and fussing from Jessie), we were finally able to get all of the glue out of Jessie's hair!
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