Well, what a day! To start the day off, Sophie fought her medication tooth and nail this morning. She wanted nothing to do with drinking it and does not understand what "clear liquids only" means. Luckily today was her first morning on two pills and we think she got down about one and a half, so I take it as an accomplishment.
Arriving to the hospital went smoothly, and we got into day surgery way ahead of schedule. The nurses and doctors were great, and we were all very comfortable. Sophie drank the initial sedative with no issue, but hated the effect. She became SO crabby along with loopy and tired. She got off to the MRI without any real issues though. They updated us throughout the process and she was done within an hour and a half.
Waking up from the sedation was a different story--what was expected to take between 15 and 45 minutes, ended up taking over two hours! She just struggled coming to, and even after she did wake up after an hour and a half, she could not hold up her head and it was like holding an extra-large infant as her neck bobbled all around! Once we got her dressed and somewhat ready to go, she fell right back to sleep. By 11:45 we finally left Day Surgery to head up to her doctor.
The doctor's visit was great. He explained what showed on her EEG which was sudden large bursts of electricity while she was sleeping-- they happened drastically and frequently, besides the more normal (for Absence Seizures) bursts when she was awake. He did not have the MRI results but continues to be hopeful that the medication will stop her seizures. He said that after two full weeks on her current does of Depakote (250 in the morning and 250 in the evening) the seizures should stop completely. If not, then we can go up one more pill at night, but he hopes that won't be needed. He is also confident that we'll get her stable enough on the medication to be alert during school.
The more long-term story he is leaving up to us. He stated that if, in three years, she hasn't had any seizures, we can decide if we want to try weaning off the medicine to see if she can handle it; or, if we aren't comfortable with weaning her yet, we can continue on it. He focuses on treating the child rather than the test results and doesn't think we'll need another EEG if we believe she seems more stable! Big sigh of relief on that one--no more 3:00 am mornings any time soon. The only bad news is that she will need to have her blood work done every few months--not too bad.
When we arrived home she was exhausted and spent the early part of the afternoon in our bed. The one time she got out of our bed, she went to her own and threw up all over it! I called Day Surgery and this is normal after sedation and it was the only time it's happened since we've been home (I have to say that honestly, I was more upset that I changed her sheets LAST NIGHT than that she got sick). The rest of the day has gone well. Her energy is back up, she just took her evening dose of medicine and tomorrow she's back to Pre-School and I'm back to work...and in just three weeks she's off to Kindergarten. I don't think this could have been done with better timing. She should stop having seizures just in time to start Elementary School :)
No comments:
Post a Comment