what's recent

Sigh...

With the good comes the bad, it seems.

Emily's seizures have gotten out of hand again.

We went from just a hand full of seizure per week to 60-80 on one day, resulting in multiple doses of emergency meds and multiple calls to her neuro.

All day seizures for Emily equals no sleep. Most kids sleep a lot after seizures but not Emily.

Just last night she only slept maybe 4-5 hours and none of that was in a row.

She just had a sleep deprived eeg to see whats going on. When we do a sleep deprived eeg Emily can sleep from 11pm until 4am. I have to wake her up and keep her awake (fun)

We did a really good job, both of us were ready for a nap when we got home.

Her eeg showed an increase in seizure activity compared to the last eeg. There are some other changes too and she is already scheduled for a brain MRI to see whats new.

She did just pop another tooth through but she is still having daily seizures so that rules that out.

She also had another UTI when her seizures picked up, we treated that and did a recheck and her urine is clean now, so that rules that out as well.

While we are on the subject of UTI...

Emily has had several and while we do the very best we can to prevent them, (keep her well hydrated, clean, probiotics ect...) she keeps getting them.

Kids like Emily with low muscle tone can have bladder reflux where the urine goes back up into your kidneys and causes infections.

Our pediatrician suggested we do a kidney ultra sound to check for damage. If anything showed anything we would do a more invasive test.

Thankfully it was normal.



She was such a good girl during testing!

So here we are. Back to the drawing board.

We are waiting on new medicine from Canada called clobazam.

It is not FDA approved in the US, yet.

I just want to take a minute and say how thankful I am for Emily's neuro.

He makes himself available to us all the time. We have his cell phone but for after hours I don't want to bother him :) The on call neuro called him and within minutes I had a call from him wanting to know why we did not just call his cell phone to begin with.

It makes me thankful to know that someone cares for my daughter so much. He does not have to do that.

Please pray that this new medicine will help Emily.

I hate trying a new medicine, especially with all the recent development she has had.



18 month check up

Emily had her 18 month check up today.

She is almost 21 lbs now! Her head, height and weight are all small, on the charts though and proportionate.

We were very frustrated this time because we had to wait 1 1/2 hours for a scheduled well baby check up. She is not getting vaccines right now so all the doctor needed to do is check most orifices-all were clear. I don't think she even looked at Joe or myself once. She never once asked how Emily was doing or if she was doing anything new since her 12 month check up. She never asked if Joe and I were doing ok or if we needed anything.

She was rude and angry that her nurse was not there to write her prescriptions and notes.

The reason we have stayed as long as we have is because of the awesome nurse case manager. Thankfully we don't see the pediatrician often.

It just makes me so sad to see a doctor who is doing their job because she has to do it, not because she loves to do it. You know a doctor who does it because he loves to do it when you see one.

Emily has had much better head control lately. She still has far to come but her PT thinks we may have her setting up within the next 6 months! I can't wait to see my baby setting!!!

She has two teeth on the bottom and one on top is getting ready to break through.

We know that teething is a seizure trigger for her and because we keep a daily journal on all of her seizure activity we can see trends.

Teeth!

The good thing is 3 months ago when Emily would have bad days she would have over 200+ seizures on top of her spasms. The past month or so during her bad days she is only having 20-30 seizures! That is a huge improvement! The only change we have made is wean her topamax.

Every time we decrease a med we see improvement. She gets her last dose of topamax on New Years Eve. We will be bringing in the new year one less med!!!

She loves the computer!

Another good thing is we finally got speech therapy approved and found a ST in our area to take her case! I am told she is the best and is very hard to get.

We have dropped her occupational therapist for now. The therapist told us that we over-medicate Emily and that every blink of the eye we see seizures (prob because we do!!) we spoil Emily, the list goes on and on. This was a fight I did not have the energy to fight and in our little country town there are not any other OTs right now. So she is getting PT twice per week, Speech once per week, and vision once per month.

Really into something!

Oh I almost forgot! I don't want to say this very loud but she has been sleeping 6-7 hours at night! Normal people sleeping time!! WOO HOO!!

off

I don't really want to blog right now but I am making myself.

Things have not been good lately.

Emily's seizures have picked up in spite of everything we are doing.

She has what we think are seizure-free days once or twice every week to two weeks but I am not sure that they are really seizure free.

The past few days have gotten really bad.  She is having so many seizures and we are giving her a lot of meds to TRY and slow them down but they are not working well anymore.

She is weaker than she has ever been and has not been herself in a few days.

She is twitchy and very seizurey looking.

We took her to the ped yesterday just to check labs and urine to make sure it's not something simple like an infection or off labs we are dealing with but they were normal.

I really don't want to go the hospital (especially during cold and flu season) we have oxygen and and a monitor at home and we have been using it lately. She has only needed oxygen once but we are thankful we had it.

We are taking her in to see the neuro the beginning of next week and hopefully we can figure something out.

I want my happy smiling baby back.

"friends"

We all have them, if you have facebook then you have even more of them... I am talking about "friends". They are more like acquaintances really.

I had to un-friend someone yesterday. The person, on more than one occasion, has put on their status jokes about people with special needs. I usually just try to let it go and not get to me. Usually...

Last night was different. I saw their status and I tried REALLY hard to let it go but I just could not do it this time.

I had listened to a song that morning and one of the lines were "when I was weak, unable to speak..." and that line was stuck in my head and I looked at Emily and thought I have to say something. He has to know this is wrong and not ok.

I told him in the kindest way I could how I felt and fully expected an apology put instead I got the opposite. Without going into all  the details I will just say I am now one less friend on facebook. My heartfelt words just bounced off of him and unfortunately I feel this will not change him at all.

What hurts me the most is I know this will not be the only "friend" in life I will loose because I choose to defend my daughter who has special needs and not conform to a simple minded community who thinks it is funny to mock children with disabilities.

I am going to pray for this person and hope that his heart is softened and he will see what I was trying to say. I also pray these very same people NEVER have to fight wars such as these for their children.

We fight for so much for our kids from insurance coverage, nursing hours, medications, therapies, to the best schools for them. The last thing we should have to fight for is acceptance.

I am not perfect, nor will I ever claim to be. I am passionate though. Very passionate about my daughter and I will stop at nothing to give her the best life possible.

Oh and to update you on Emily. She has only had one seizure in the last 2 days and she is fully on food now. If she is awake she will eat at least some of the food and once or twice per day she will eat her whole meal. We have had lot of smile and laughing too!

She makes it all worth it.