Change In Plans

The only guidance I have gotten for making these posts interesting is to be brutally honest. I’m not quite sure what that means.

Yesterday, blessing #1 that I started with (healthy family) got a qualifier. After being seizure free for several years, our son appeared to have an absence

seizure yesterday afternoon. Thinking about it, we realized he has probably had several seizures over the last few weeks. He has definitely not “been himself,” and we feel a little negligent, in retrospect, for not realizing what was happening.

Many of the same triggers which were associated with his seizures in late 2004 are present now:
stress and uncertainty of moving house (from NYC to New Jersey then, from New Jersey to California and then New Jersey to a great unknown now), a major change in family dynamic (birth of his sister then, me no longer working now), irregular and insufficient sleep schedule, poor eating. We also got him his first-ever video game last week, which we probably let him play for too many hours, including very late at night with friends during sleepovers. Reading this over, it doesn’t seem like the model of responsible parenting, but until there is a problem, I guess I let it slide.

His seizure raises a lot of questions about our travel plans. Fortunately, we are in Nashville, and can take him to Vanderbilt to be seen in their pediatric epilepsy unit. He was very well controlled with Lamictal for the two years after his last round of seizures (and then we weaned him off), so maybe we go back to that.

It is scary and sobering to have our child go through this.