epilepsy dad

Tag: medicine

  • Asking The Big Man For A Reason

    Asking The Big Man For A Reason

    Most nights, I ask God why this is happening to my son.

    We went in for our three-month checkup for the ketogenic diet and also saw our neurologist. The good news is that the diet is helping. The bad news is that his EEG looks worse than it did last time. The good news is that the neurologist thinks it’s because the medicine he was toxic on and that we weaned him off was helping with his seizures but there is another medicine we can try. The bad news is that we’re adding yet another medicine, and that the new medicine has some really scary side effects, especially if it is introduced too quickly.

    We knew this was coming. Our neurologist has been mentioning the new medicine for weeks now. We had hoped that, as we weaned off the other medicine, that the diet would have done more. But as his nighttime seizures increased, we slowly started to accept that the diet and the medicine that he was still on wasn’t doing enough. In the end, we opted to give him the new medicine, and his first dose was last night.

    My wife is out of town, so it was just me and my son. After I triple checked the literature to check how much to give him, I cut the pill, placed it on the counter, and watched him place it, along with his other pills, in to his mouth, grab the water, and swallow the lot.

    We won’t know whether the medicine will work or not for at least weeks, and he won’t be up to the target dose for months. That is, unless the side effects kick in, which would mean we have another set of problems to worry about. But maybe this will be the first medicine out of the 7 we have tried that he won’t have an adverse reaction to.

    God and I have a…complicated…relationship. We haven’t always seen eye to eye. Like my biological father, God and I hadn’t really talked in years and I rarely (if ever) talk about either of them. Unlike my biological father, though, He and I started talking again when my son was born. I thanked Him. I thanked Him for blessing me with a healthy baby boy. I thanked Him for my family. I thanked Him for my life.

    I still thank Him. What is happening to my son is a terrible thing. Like many parents, if I could take this burden from my son and bear every seizure instead of him, I would. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

    But even as I question the reason that this is happening, even as I wonder why this is part of His plan, and even though I wonder how He do this to a child, even though He may never answer, I still thank Him for the gift that is my son.

  • Break On Through

    Break On Through

    The house had been quiet at night since we left the hospital. My wife and son had been sleeping on our small bed while I slept on the couch in the living room. This temporary living arrangement was brought on by necessity since his elevated loft bed in the basement was not compatible with our new reality, and the stairs down to his room posed a hazard should he have a seizure and try to navigate his way up to our room in the middle of the night.

    The first few nights back home, there was little sleep as we waited to see how our son would do. We’d been in this cycle where we would leave the hospital armed with a new medicine and no seizures only to find ourselves back in the hospital a few days later when the seizures returned in force.

    But after a week without an incident, in a house filled with silence, my body was finally able to relax. The slender couch with the small “Home Sweet Home” decorative pillow (that I know I’m not supposed to use) were a welcome relief from the uncomfortable hospital accommodations.

    With so many quiet nights in a row, my brain resisted reacting to the alarm bell my ears heard echoing through the halls, the unmistakable sound bellowing from my son’s vocal chords that announced the arrival of another seizure . I rolled off the couch, landed on my feet, and raced to the bedroom at the back of our apartment. I caught a glance at the digital clock on the microwave as I passed. It read 5:32, and I noted it so that we could measure the duration of the seizure, the mechanics of counting and measuring seizures having become rote.

    By the time I reached the bedroom, the thankfully short seizure was already over and my wife was comforting my son. I laid with them for awhile before returning to the couch. This time, my body refused to relax, and I nervously stayed alert to listen for another seizure, which also came later the same morning, followed by another cluster that required the use of the rescue medicines before they dissipated.

    They call these “break through” seizures because they occur in spite of the use of anticonvulsants or, in our case, three anticonvulsants and countless prayers. We’ve experienced enough of them to know what we are supposed to do, which is as terrible as it sounds.  But we stayed home and, given our year so far, that is a marked improvement.