Journal entry by Barbara Bradley — Nov 26, 2012

Today is the two-year anniversary of Katie’s brain surgery and I should be posting that she is seizure free unfortunately that is not the case. Katie was admitted last night to Duke University Hospital for testing and to get her seizures under control. After a lovely Thanksgiving we headed to the zoo the next day. It was perfect weather and fun for all…..until the 6 puking seizures Katie had. We were standing in line for the Merry-go-Round which Katie loves. I was behind her and she was squealing with excitement and trying to climb the railing to get to the ride. I then see her bouncing up and down so I leaned down to see what I thought was going to be her beautiful, happy face only to find her panicked in the midst of a seizure. She had about 8 more episodes like this that day. Saturday the number quickly jumped close to 20.

Sunday afternoon I emailed her neurologist and it was recommended I bring her in to get a handle on things given her history of escalating so quickly. Remember how I said I would never do another EEG on her….well, she has now had two in the same week. Thank God it was close to midnight by this point and she was too exhausted to put up a fight. We arrived around 9:30, got checked in, CT scan run and EEG leads hooked up. It was 1am by that time. Katie seized close to every few minutes so I stayed in her bed so I could push a button to document the episodes. Needless to say there wasn’t much sleeping going on until they finally gave her some ativan to calm her. They needed to capture the episodes for the EEG so they waited til early morning. By the time we got to sleep everyone started coming in to do rounds. Uuugh! For now, I don’t have all pieces of the puzzle.

The EEG confirmed they are seizures and they are showing up on the right side but this doesn’t mean they are originating from that side. It very well could be and hopefully is that there is a missed connection and the left side activity is traveling over. Tomorrow she will have a very detailed MRI that I pray shows us what we need to see. If not, the good side may not be so good. This seems unlikely though. We have never seen any activity on the right side before. For now, they increased her Keppra and have given her an IV loading dose of a new med that seems to have made significant improvement in the number of seizures. She is doing fairly well today but physically tired and tired of being here. Me too. But I am thankful to be here and getting these tests done so quickly as opposed to waiting weeks as you would expect. We were pretty devastated this weekend but we knew something was brewing. Now our focus is gathering data and deciding our next move. I hope we get out of here tomorrow but I just remembered we are on the calendar to see a doctor with the Duke Eye Center on Wednesday. If they discharge us tomorrow I will probably get a hotel and stay the night so I can keep her appointment with the Eye Doctor. We are already here so what’s another day. Pray for my sweet girl.