Sunday, November 22, 2009

Out of the Hospital

I have a lot to say about Jack and his recent trip to the hospital, but he's teething so I've gotten no sleep. None. At. All.

At our follow up visit with Dr. Kane, the neurologist, he wanted to do a longer EEG to make sure that the staring spells Jack has been having weren't seizures. He was so positive that it was nothing and that Jack was fine, but my mommy instincts were going off. I was really hopeful that they were just on over load from everything that has gone on so far. So the EEG was to catch one of these spells on the EEG and eliminate any problems.

We checked in on Monday morning at 7:00 to hook Jack up to the EEG. That. Was. Awful. It took everything in me not to cry with him. It took about 2 hours to get everything hooked up. They had to cement the electrodes to his head with glue and cold air, it was horrible. Almost as bad as the day I wasn't able to feed him all day. Not quite that bad, but close.

He was leashed. We could move around the room, but that was it. And it was a royal pain to keep up with those things. Jack was not a happy camper. The first 24 hours weren't fun, but the second 24 were awful. That's right, we were there hooked up to that think for 48 hours.

After the first day, after not seeing any staring spells, the doc had looked at the EEG and said that so far it looked perfect. The next day at noon-ish he came by, said that he was going to go scower the EEG and that we needed to talk about when we wanted to go home. We felt like we were damned if we did and damned if we didn't. We really wanted to catch one of these spells on the EEG but at the same time we had no idea when it would happen and Jack was so upset about being hooked up to that thing.

Dr. Kane came back about 2 hours later and said that he was really sorry but he was wrong and he found some abnormalities. They indicated that Jack is having partial seizures. The whole conversation is a blur. He said that Jack might grow out of this in a few year. Yeah, YEARS. Or it may be something he has for the rest of his life.

Let me go on a little tangent here and say that we all have our shit to deal with. Some people have weight issues, I've had pain issues and lived in constant pain for 2 years, and some people deal with mental health issues. We all have something to deal with, this is Jack's.

Anyways, after a sleepless night in the hospital where Jack was up every 45 minutes we got unhooked and bolted home. He was so happy to be at home and playing with his toys.

Saturday evening we finally got to talk to the doctor. He called after he went over the rest of the EEG. We didn't get a staring spell on the EEG but the spikes indicate that something isn't right. He recommended not medicating him and waiting it out a little. If it's going to get worse, it will be obvious and we'll call right away and get medicine started. However the doctor is hopeful that this will go away on its own. In the mean time we are treating him with acupuncture.

Knowing that there is something wrong with my baby's brain and that there isn't much I can do but wait for it to get worse is stressful to say the least. We're just praying that he doesn't come out of this with any brain damage and that this is all just a bad memory sooner rather than later.

He hasn't slept well all week. I haven't eaten dinner 3 nights because I'm just too tired. Hopefully the teething will end soon and we can all get some much needed rest.

Here is my little man all hooked up and taking it well... the first day.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Remember this guy?


I took care of Cooper for about10 months and I still think about him often. I can't believe how much he's changed in a year. And the hair, HE HAS HAIR!

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

An update on Jack

Jack is completely off his meds! He's in a much better mood and it's so wonderful to finally have my happy baby back. He was sick last week, but still in a better mood than when he was on the meds.


He's still not sleeping great but some nights are better than others. Last night he was only up once but that one time he was up, he was up for an hour. We're waiting until this weekend to make sure all the meds are out of his little system before we do any kind of sleep training.


We see the neurologist next Wednesday and we're hoping for a clean bill of health. I'm wondering how likely it is that these things could re-occur. We have the crazy expensive meds in our refrigerator and we're hoping to have to find someone to donate them too (though I think we should try and find a UT football player to sell them to.)


Jack continues to develop perfectly and is crawling everywhere now. That started a little earlier than I had hoped, but better early than late. He loves to try and chew on shoes so we're having to do keep things a little more picked up around here. And I'm so tired of finding his toys in the back yard that the dogs have been banished to the kitchen during the day. And speaking of the kitchen, I still need to post before and after pictures of our floors. There's so much to do.



Anyways, back to Jack. He is so proud of himself for figuring out how to go from crawling to sitting. He can go, he can stop, he can sit, and he can drool. Oh the drool, or I suppose I should really say the spit. He blows raspberries all the time, and he really loves to do it as soon as I put food in his mouth. I now wear a robe when I feed the little booger. He's not a big fan of solids. I'm planning on getting a video of it soon to hold against him later in life.

Halloween was fun. We just went to a little festival in Shawn and Kelly's neighborhood but we got to see them and Grace. Grace was a cow girl so Jack was her cow. I have a ton of costume pictures though so I'll post those soon. They are all super cute.