Seizure And G-Tube Woes

So we started this morning off with a bang. Connor had his first seizure since November; it took me a few seconds to figure out what was going on, as it took me so off-guard. This one was fairly short: only about twenty seconds, but that was more than long enough, I assure you.

Connor's seizures are very scary because they affect his autonomic nervous system, so his symptoms are almost identical to sudden cardiac arrest. Basically he stops breathing, loses conciousness, and goes blue-grey from his head to his toes. They don't really look like seizures at all, which is why it took the doctors so long to diagnose them. I put him down on the office floor and administered rescue breathing until he started breathing again on his own, and then hooked him up to some oxygen until his color returned. Then after playing the "the party you are trying to reach is busy, please hang up and try again later" game with the neurology department down at Madigan for ten minutes or so, I stuck the little guy in the car and drove down there. I stopped by the pediatrician's office, got Connor's weight, and then went across the hall to neurology and left a note for the doctor, who got back to me a couple of hours later and made an adjustment to Connor's medication.

It's hard to know exactly why he had the seizure, as his weight really hasn't changed all that much. Part of it might be the illness and surgery-- we know that stress can lower the seizure threshold, and those things certainly have been stressful. At any rate, hopefully the new medication dose will keep him seizure-free, which would be really, really good for all parties involved.

Because of the seizure, Connor was sleepy and irritable for a good portion of the day. Towards the evening he started feeling better, and when we put him down for bed he didn't fuss at all. About ten minutes after we put him down he started crying very suddenly and I went in and discovered to my horror that he had his hand wrapped around his g-tube. He'd yanked some of the tape off and the stitches had come free, but thankfully that was as far as he'd gotten. If his g-tube comes out before six weeks have gone by, he has to have surgery all over again, so thank goodness we caught him in time. We retaped it up, and I'll be calling Children's in Seattle tomorrow morning to see whether or not we need to bring him in to have the stitches redone.

All in all, it was not a day I would like to repeat any time soon.