Roughness

Yall, the past few weeks have been rough. First there was the miscarriage and the diagnosis of an abnormal uterus. I mean, that was enough for me. But there's been something else going on, too, that has made it a particularly rough time lately.

My little L has been having these "episodes" during which she seems to lose muscle control. At first, they were very few and far between and she would literally fall to the ground and be unable to stand or walk for a minute or two. Talk about scary! During the last three months or so, though, L has been experiencing these episodes more often than she was before, although they seem to be a little bit less severe.

So, we've been making the rounds to the pediatrician and then the pediatric neurologist to see if we can find out what is happening. Last week we reported to the hospital at the awful hour of 7:45 am to hook my darling up and have an EEG done. I'll write more about that experience later, but the short story is that when we met with the neurologist again last Thursday we found out her EEG came back normal (praise God!).

That sounds really great, right? Well it is, except it doesn't really tell us anything. They thought she might be experiencing seizures and have epilepsy. According to the neurologist, an EEG will pick up about 80% of pediatric epilepsy cases, so there is quite a bit of room for error. So, we're having a second EEG done in about a month since apparently a repeat EEG can sometimes pick up something a previous one might have missed. If that comes back normal and the episodes continue, we will have to do a day-stay EEG in which we get to hang out at the hospital all day with L hooked up.

Other things we talked about that could be the cause of these episodes are low blood sugar, an auto-immune disorder, something going on with her nervous system - either some kind of disorder or it could just be an overload of the system because she is growing so much (something she might just mature out of), or - and I HATE even writing this possibility down - a brain tumor. That last one there scares the pants off of me.

During this last appointment the neurologist said that he doesn't think she's having seizures. We're going to continue testing in case she does since seizures can manifest in many different ways, but, he really doesn't think that's the problem. So, if both the next regular EEG and the day-stay EEG come back normal then we're going to talk about having an MRI done to rule out anything like a (gulp) tumor. We also had to buy a blood glucose monitor this weekend so we can attempt to test her blood sugar during the next episode.

So, yea, this has been super stressful. Last week was especially stressful with the EEG and the neurologist appointments and she had an episode on Tuesday. For two weeks before last week we had out of town company and right before that was my diagnosis and right before that was the miscarriage and by the end of last week I felt like I was ready to lose it. But, after a wonderful "stay-cation" this past weekend I feel a lot better today. Much less stressed, much more happy.

Please forgive me for not stopping by your blogs and commenting very much - my time at the computer has been limited and when I am able to get online I find myself spending the time googling things about pediatric epilepsy and hypoglycemia in toddlers. I hope all has been well with you guys lately.