The Calm Before the Storm

I'm sitting in a hospital bed right now holding a very sick little Doodle. Things went from bad to worse last night after his second grand mal seizure. He had seven more. This is the Doodle's record. Nine big ass-kicking grand mal seizures in 12 hours. He is fried.

We called UCSF and they told us to bring him to our local hospital's emergency room so that they could give him a sedative drug meant to stop or interrupt the seizures. They were coming almost every hour and they were horrific.

The Doodle is very sensitive to sedation drugs. They have the opposite effect on him. Valium hypes him up. So now we sit here, watching the Doodle bounce off the walls not sleeping. Our little insomniac is screaming, totally freaked out yet so tired he can't stand it. All he wants to do is pull his IV out. He didn't sleep all night. None of us did. The irony is being tired can bring on seizures...

The last week he had virtually no seizures. It was awesome. We had our baby back. His entire mood and spirits were up! He got a taste of what it must feel like to feel good.

I thought the medicine was finally working. Part of me, the wishful part, thought maybe he had outgrown them. It's possible right? Possible but not likely.

It's as if the anti-seizure medicine had been suppressing the seizures but then pissed them off in the meantime. Hell hath no fury like a pissed off seizure. Now they were catching up. Never, ever, has the Doodle had this many grand mal seizures in one day. His high score was 4 in one day and that was rare and then he didn't have another one for a week and a half.

The two doses of Ativan have done nothing. You would think they would have knocked him out. Nope. Wide awake. They even tried some Benadryl. Nope. Still awake. Every time he starts to fall asleep, he jolts himself awake and then screams. Almost like he's getting an electric shock or having another seizure. We can't tell and they do not have him hooked up to an EEG; so we do not know.

They told us they were going to transport us to UCSF because they do not have a Pediatric Neurologist here and now our nice new doctor is there anyway. But UCSF declined. They said there is nothing they can do for us there that they can't do here. Basically, there is nothing you can do for seizures except watch and wait and then throw medicine on them and hope for the best. I'm not going to take this personally.

I wish they could at least tell us why this is happening. What is causing these seizures? There is something very wrong with the Doodle and we do not know what it is. The seizures are not the disease but a symptom of another disease or so I read.70% of epilepsy cases never learn the why...it just is.

They've once again increased his medication dosages, so we will have to wait and see. As for how long we will be in here, I do not know. He's already had two grand mal's here at the hospital. I'm not sure the pissed off seizures are ready to stop any time soon.

They are talking about doing a spinal tap. I can't imagine that so I am trying not to think of that right now. This would be to see if he has Meningitis. Wouldn't he have some other symptoms? He has none. Just seizures. I had Jim google Meningitis. It's a pretty scary viral infection.

Please say a prayer for the Doodle. He can use all the prayers he can get right now.

Thank you.