We have had a busy start to March in the Miller household. On the 5th, Madi had an EEG test. This reads electrical activity of the brain and can help determine whether or not your child has seizures. Butch and I requested that the test be done after several episodes that we believe were mild seizures. For kids Madi's age, the EEG had to be a sleep deprivation test! Yay for only four hours of sleep! Ok, that was sarcasm. Keeping a two year old awake until midnight is not an easy task, especially when they start yawning at 10pm and keep repeatedly saying, "Night night". Then you have to wake them up at 4am and keep them awake until the test is performed. Thankfully, Madi handled the whole thing fairly well. Much better than I anticipated. She has a lot of patience for enduring these doctor visits.
We received the results of those tests on the 10th. She had one abnormal reading that was typical of patients with epilepsy. However, the neurologist did say that some kids tested can have this show up on the results and they are not epileptic, so we would need to do more testing to determine whether or not she has epilepsy. Butch and I have only noticed 3-4 episodes in the past 2-3 months. They are very brief. Our neurologist doesn't feel that we need to do further testing at this time. We are to keep a detailed journal of these episodes and then we will discuss things further when we see him in May. At that appointment we will decide how to proceed.
Also on the 10th, we had an EKG and an ultrasound of the heart. Our geneticist wanted this test done to rule out other diagnoses. Many conditions with abnormalities of the brain also include abnormalities of the heart. We tried to do this test a year ago and Madi refused to cooperate. What a difference a year makes! Thankfully, you don't have to wait for the test results. The cardiologist found nothing wrong with her heart. One more doctor we can cross off our list!! We only have to go back if Madi is later diagnosed with a condition that sees a decrease in heart function as the child ages or a thickening of the heart muscle.
Obviously, not all the test results were as we would have wanted, but we weren't surprised either.
For all my prayer partners out there- my prayer right now is that we would not see an increase in these "episodes" that we believe to be seizures, and that if Madi is later diagnosed with epilepsy that she would not need to be medicated.
On a side note, our walker arrives this week (19th). It has "only" taken six months since the doctor gave the orders for one for it to get here, but I'll be blogging about that transition soon.
