Pediatric Ambulatory EEG for Epilepsy and Seizure Disorders
A lot of you know it’s been a rough year for Elizabeth, as I have posted about it before. In the past few weeks, more has happened. We did get in with the neurologist. They did take the dizzy-falling down-throwing up-migraine episodes seriously (finally!)
We’ve been having one every few weeks since November. The last one was the day of Elizabeth’s second-grade Valentine Party, but she forced herself to feel better despite being carried off the playground (our new migraine drug Maxalt helped tremendously) and attended the party. That girl is motivated by cupcakes, no doubt.
The doctor ordered a weekend-long EEG test. Elizabeth would get wired on a Friday and carry the machine around through Sunday. In the same manner that we had trouble getting appointments, we had a lot of trouble getting this scheduled. After five weeks of runaround, I finally called and said, “You have to cancel our appointment with the doctor as the test she ordered wasn’t done since you never scheduled it.” This lit a fire under them, but unfortunately, the only weekend left was during our trip to see my family and my 40th birthday.
So we had to cancel the trip, and I spent my 40th watching Elizabeth get attached to the electrodes. We did our best to have a good day.
One thing we discovered, however, is how ill prepared we were for this test. We looked for pictures of the machine so we could show Elizabeth how big or small it would be, and found very little, just one manufacturer picture that was obviously just an ad. We just happened to read a reminder on some other doctor’s site to wear a button-down shirt or you’d be stuck in the same clothes for three days. Gah! Why weren’t they telling us all this?
So in the end, I decided to use a Canon 7D to take photographs and HD video to document the whole experience. My blog’s Google ranking is pretty good, so hopefully when other parents start searching for information, they will find this and be able to show their children what to expect and feel less anxious.
I’m posting it both from Vimeo and YouTube as the HD can hitch a little for those of you without great connections and video cards that can handle it. I’ll post some stills here too, and keyword them so they will be easy to find.
This video shows in detail the procedure for a 24-hour ambulatory EEG test given over three days for Elizabeth, who had her first seizure at age six.
Elizabeth started her medicine today. We said NO to Depakote and Topamax. We didn’t feel the side effects were worth the risk for Elizabeth, whose seizures are fairly rare and not as extreme as other children’s might be. We settled on Keppra, and can only hope for the best. I’ll post more about it as we watch Elizabeth for potential behavioral changes, but I can report that it tastes AWFUL. We have the liquid, which is allegedly grape, even though it tastes more like asphalt than any fruit. She’s practicing swallowing tiny candies so that we can hopefully switch to a pill when she’s worked up to the full dose.
We can only pray she’ll do well and stay caught up in school.
Ms. Kim wraps the gauze to protect the electrode set up.
Elizabeth plays her favorite video game during her EEG
Elizabeth with her gear for her three-day home EEG
