epilepsy Archives - Page 74 of 84

How Far We Have Come

A year ago, we sat next to our son’s bed in the hospital holding his hand and praying for his seizures to stop. That is when we learned what status epilepticus was, and we watched the monitor above the bed as the EEG machine that my son was hooked up to registered seizure after seizure after seizure. It takes a trained technician to truly understand the meaning of the spikes and waves that show up on the screen, but the Event counter kept climbing, and the increases coincided with what we saw happening to the body and mind of our little boy.

I remember falling asleep next to him, only to be woken by the sound of another seizure. I’d tilt my head back to read the screen upside down and, even though I was only asleep a short time, the counter would have increased more than it should have. My wife or I would then have to get up and push the “we saw a seizure” button and record the seizure on a piece of paper, in the dark using the light of our phone or the EEG screen so that we could fill in another row on the seizure chart with the same short pencils that they hand out to record your score at a golf course. What an odd thought to have while scribbling the duration and characteristics of a seizure, but I was delirious, and scared, and lost, and at that moment, that pencil provided a fleeting, comforting place for my mind to wander.

Thinking back to those nights, as out of control as everything seemed and as much as we felt as if we just kept falling, we had no way of knowing what would lie ahead. As dark as those first nights seemed, we were practically basking in daylight compared to the blackness that was to come.

There would be many more nights connected to the EEG, more charts, more tests, more little pencils, and many, many more seizures. There would be a string of doctors, nurses, and medications, side effects and unbearable behavioral changes. There would be discharges and readmissions, and many questions, but very few answers.

My son was not among the lucky (if there is such a thing) epileptics that could take one medicine and be under control. Instead, he’s in the very unlucky group that still struggles to find the right medicine and the right dose to stop the seizures that torment his brain. While his seizures are not completely under control, they are less frequent. He can walk, and run, and talk, and learn, and laugh, and he even has really, really good days.

We have very few answers but, in spite of that, we’re making progress. Our year adrift in an angry sea has thrown us in every direction imaginable, but we’re hopefully headed towards calmer waters.

How far we’ve come. But it feels like we still have very far to go.

Actually, My Son Is Not “Fine”. But He Is Amazing.

I spoke with an administrator at my son’s school, talking about how the year was going so far, asking about how the replacement for his one-on-one was going, and just generally checking in. The administrator said that my son seemed to be doing “fine”.

“Actually, ” I said, “he’s not fine. He has epilepsy. Some mornings, he has seizures. Then we give him his anti-epileptic medicine and try to help him keep his attention focused long enough to get dressed for school. Luckily on most days now, he can stomach breakfast. The diet that he is on is really hard on him, but hey, it helps with his seizures. Then he walks or, on good days, rides his scooter a few blocks to school. We’re grateful that the short trip doesn’t tire him out as much as it used to when school first started. Then we drop him off in to a class that has 29 kids and hope that his one-on-one (when he had one) cares enough that day to help him focus on his class work and hopefully pay attention long enough to pick up what is being taught that day. He can’t follow more than one direction at a time, and it takes an enormous amount of energy to stay focused for that long. By mid-morning, his brain is already exhausted and his body starts to follow, but he makes it to lunch, where he usually just watches his classmates eat. Recess, though, is his favorite part of the day, where he can play with his classmates with whatever energy he has left, although I think he usually wills himself to fake having energy so that he can just be with other kids. Then he packs up, heads home, has a small snack before his body and mind give up and he has to take a nap, just so he can wake up and make it the rest of the day. That’s not what I call fine.”

The administrator was caught off guard by my rebuttal. “I just meant that academically he seems to be where he should be.”

“He’s doing well academically because after he wakes up from his nap, our nanny reads and works with him to help reinforce what we’re hoping he’s learning in class and missing from the afternoon sessions. By the time I get home from work, he’s usually exhausted mentally again, but we get to play while dinner is in the oven. Well, unless it’s our night to go to behavior therapy. After dinner, we pop him full of pills again, head to bed, and then repeat the process for the foreseeable future.”

I don’t blame the administrator. He only catches glimpses of my son throughout the day. With other disabilities, there might be some external indication that a child is different, but with epilepsy and its related complications, you may not catch the signs unless you have a reference, or spend enough time with a child, or happen to catch a seizure. But while I don’t blame him, I also wanted to dissuade him from thinking that my son was just another kid and, just because he wasn’t seizing at school, that he was “fine”.

“Fine”. “Fine” doesn’t reflect the struggle he has to keep control of his body. “Fine” doesn’t show the foggy side effects of his anti-seizure medicine that clouds his brain, or the complicated, restricted diet that sometimes turns his stomach. “Fine” doesn’t capture how hard he has to work to stay focused or follow direction or put things in sequential order. “Fine” doesn’t get the help he needs at school so that he can try to keep up with the kids that aren’t filled with brain-altering drugs or seizing every day. “Fine” doesn’t convey how difficult it is for my son to make it through the day.

And yet, he does.

No, my son is not “fine.” But he is amazing.

Not Having To (Always) Say You’re Sorry

I grew up thinking that everything had to be perfect. Between the nuns at my Catholic school and my parents at home, I walked a very thin rope of perfection, calculating each step so as not to fall and raise the ire of either side. I wasn’t perfect, of course, and I probably spent just as much time suffering the consequences as I did running from them. Today, the legacy of that rigid black-and-white right-and-wrong upbringing causes me to be extremely hard on myself.

A few weeks ago, we were putting ornaments on the Christmas tree. My son was enthusiastically picking up ornaments from the pile we made for him and rushing to place them on the tree. Inevitably, one of the fragile glass bulbs slipped from his tiny hands as he rushed to stand and it crashed and broke on the floor. “I’m sorry”, he said. I told him that he should be more careful and slow down, and he apologized again.

Lately, I feel like I’m always on my son and that he spends most of his time with me apologizing. It’s a terrible feeling for me, and I can only imagine what it feels like for him. What makes it worse is that there are many times when he can’t control his body. When he’s tired, there is a disconnect between his brain and his body that exacerbates the gap that is already present in an average six-year-old.

I have gotten so used to dealing with him when the side effects of the medicine and seizures took away his ability to reason and control his body and I needed to catch everything before it escalated. Now, I can’t step back and let him explore and make mistakes.

He must feel helpless to avoid my disapproving gaze and constantly feel like he’s disappointing me. “I’m not mad, honey, I’m just disappointed” is classically the worst sentence in the history of parenting, and I feel as if I’m delivering it with every dissatisfied glance.

I’m not suggesting that there shouldn’t be any rules or consequences. Now that we’re back among the general population, I see other kids going without boundaries as their parents ignore them, and that’s the other extreme. It’s my job to teach him right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable. But my response needs to be in proportion to the behavior, and I’m having a hard time letting go of those feelings I had when things were at their worst.

One of our therapists offered a piece of advice that I am trying to put in to practice. She said that if he’s not doing something unsafe, and if what he is doing is not the end of the world, then take a deep breath and ignore it. Especially when an innocent action now feels like one that he did when his behavior was out of control, it makes sense that my alarms would be firing. But that doesn’t mean that every action needs a response. If he is being unsafe, or if he is breaking a house rule (no hitting, for example), then address it. But if he’s flopping on the ground, or his laughs turn in to a scream, then I should take that breath.

I don’t want my son spending his childhood always having to say he’s sorry. What he is going through is hard enough, and I don’t want to contribute to squelching the bright, special light that is inside his heart by making him feel like he needs to be perfect. It’s my job to help guide him along the way to stay on the right path, but it’s also my responsibility to help him be happy and free.