Sunday, April 18, 2010

These Seizures Are Going To Give Me A Stroke

Reiss creating a masterpiece for "Make Your Own Pizza Night" this past Friday evening....


Because I am a slacker blogger and have not bothered to write anything in nearly two weeks, "Which seizures?" you might ask.

Well, there was the seizure Reiss had last June that we thought certain was triggered by an antibiotic he was on at the time. Long story...He had started an antibiotic, had a seizure within twenty-four hours of the first dose, so we ceased the dosing and began looking around online for information regarding the antibiotic. Come to find out - and this was confirmed by a real live doc, not just online information - that particular antibiotic has a high seizure incident rate in the general population.

For those who are not aware, autistic children have a thirty percent (actually, I've seen varying estimates on this but for the sake of this post, I'll go with the percentage I've seen most often) higher chance of having a first-time seizure than a typical child. So why, oh why, would a doctor prescribe a medication that already has a high seizure rate in neurotypical people to a child with autism?

That is not what this post is about though, so I will go ahead and move on now. Oh wait, no, I won't. Not before mentioning that we no longer see that doctor.

And then there was the second seizure. Fast forward to this past Monday and Reiss had another seizure. This one did not come on nearly as quickly as the first one. With the first one, Reiss went from zoning out to being unconscious in a matter of ten minutes or less. With this one, he began zoning out and it was so mild that I wasn't even certain he was having a seizure. Many of his symptoms - strange noises with his tongue (only in the beginning), belly gurgling, eyes and head going off to one side, limp body - were the same both times, but the duration of the individual seizures varied greatly. This seizure went on for around forty-five minutes before our doctor ordered us to administer the anti-seizure medication.

Through all of this particular seizure, I was particularly calm to a point that it even surprised me. So the title of this blog post isn't entirely accurate but who knows maybe I was frantic on the inside.....I did catch my hand shaking at one point, but otherwise, I think my unconscious mind was sending messages to my conscious mind telling it to keep things in order.

Reiss's first seizure meant a trip to the hospital and an overnight stay. After first arriving at the hospital and a little ways into the hospital staff treating Reiss with Valium, an antibiotic, and something else that I cannot recall at the moment, James and I got treated to an interesting interaction between two of the hospital employees. They were arguing over the correct dosage amount and one was accusing the other of administering too high a dosage.

Um...hello???? Our son is convulsing on the table (which, by the way, he only began doing after they began pumping him full of God knows what) and I am sitting there a crying, blithering idiot mess of a mom. Do you really think arguing over the dose amount is something you should do in front of a parent who thinks their child may die right in front of their very eyes?? And to give said parent more fuel for the fire of her insanity in that maybe you aided in her child's death by overdosing?

Obviously, Reiss did not die but one can see where I would hesitate to take him to the hospital in the event another seizure should occur, which it did, or I would not be writing this right now. Needless to say, I was a bit reluctant to call an ambulance this time.

And guess what???

Reiss took almost two days to fully recover from his seizure and all the medications he was pumped full of last time during his care with "professionals."

His recovery time for this seizure?

Two hours. Two hours after I injected the Diastat suppository in him, Reiss was up and running around - more actively than I would have preferred, as a matter of fact. Monday evening, he seemed a little tired but Tuesday morning he was back to his usual hundred-miles-a-minute self.

I know some people will call it a coincidence that Reiss recovered so much more quickly with this seizure and they can be wrong if they want to be are welcome to their opinions. However, I truly believe Reiss recovered so soon afterward because he did not receive all the medications this time that he did last June.

It is times like these that I actually wish my family's life could be under a little microscope for doctors to observe. To see that more medications do not necessarily mean better medical care. That the body can help itself with less intervention. But that won't happen as long as there are pharmaceutical reps making themselves permanent fixtures in doctors' waiting rooms and......

Blah, blah, blah....I'm officially rambling and the pharmaceutical argument is not one I plan to revisit today.

Reiss is fine. All week long, he has played just like nothing extraordinarily out-of-the-ordinary happened earlier this week. He is back to challenging James and me when we tell him to do something and seeing what he can get away with and bossing Milla around and arguing with her and taking toys from her and crying when she instigates something herself. He made it through one full week this week with no #2 accidents in his pants. Yesterday, we visited a bounce place as a reward. He helped make pancakes yesterday on Pancake Saturday, just as he has done every single Saturday for almost four years now. This afternoon, as I did make-ahead prep work of cutting veggies and mixing sauce ingredients for our dinner, Reiss made certain I was aware - by telling me no less than thirty times - that he does not like Orange Chicken (that he apparently has forgotten that he eats the heck out of every single time we have it for dinner). As I write this, Reiss is "helping" change flood lights outside by holding the ladder for James. Hopefully, "holding the ladder" does not mean tipping the ladder and a dreaded visit to the hospital.

Yes, things are back to normal. Life is good.............

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