Sunday, January 17, 2010

In Which Connor's New Medicine Doesn't Work

This afternoon Connor was sitting and playing so nicely with his toys that I had to take a video to show you! Ignore my piles of clean laundry in the background.

Anyway, the really cool thing about this video is that not only is Connor sitting well totally unsupported, but he's actually reaching across midline for a toy without losing his balance. Jeremy has to help him lean forward a little as he's not sure where in space the toy is, but otherwise he does remarkably well, even rocking back and forward a little. He sat up and played with various toys for about twenty minutes straight-- this is towards the end of that time period. It's amazing to see how far he's come in such a short time, and I'm excited to see where he'll be in a few more months!

So that was the good part of the day. About fifteen minutes after I shot this video Connor had a seizure. It actually took us a minute or so to figure out that he was having one because he was sitting next to me on the futon with his Annie Ooo toy in front of him and he continued trying to play with it while he was seizing. Or at least he did until he quit breathing, which is when we realized he wasn't just leaning against me because he was tired. I lay him down and gave him nine or ten breaths-- he was only not breathing for about a minute. He came out of it, had a good cry, and went to bed, which is where he is now.

I'm really disappointed because we'd hoped that his new medication would stop his seizures, and evidently that's not going to be the case. At least this one wasn't very bad. I also feel guilty because we didn't realize he was having one despite having seen so many of these, and also because I sort of feel like maybe he had it because we pushed him too hard today on the physical therapy front. It's hard to know what triggers these seizures, or if there's really any external trigger at all.

Oh well. Sometimes I feel like we're always taking two steps forward, one step back around here. It's slow going, but we'll get somewhere eventually; I just know it.

~Jess

5 comments:

Laura aka Mama Ham said...

So sweet, he did a great job. Sorry about his seizure.

Wherever HE Leads We'll Go said...

Connor looks great in that video! So sorry that he is having seizures even with the new meds. That is so frustrating!

Rena said...

how frustrating, and frightening. Especially since it sounds like he was having a great day. So sorry.

Elizabeth said...

It's been my experience that my daughter sometimes has an increase in seizures when she's really concentrating on something or learning something new -- it's as if her brain is a bit overloaded or something. I know you mentioned that this one was smaller than usual so perhaps it wasn't the medicine NOT working but the usual dysfunction happening because of the increased good activity and the medicine smothering the seizure a bit...

I feel your frustration, though -- know exactly what that's about...

Anonymous said...

Elizabeth's comment makes sense. Have you ever felt you have a consistent association between a circumstance and seizures?

On a couple of occasions when a child's seizure occured during therapy, I dutifully beat-up myself. However, always after someone, usually the parent, would tell me - they have seizures all the time when NOT with me.

Seizures related to a heavy workout in PT - do you really think so?

In the early days of SI therapy, there was great fear that vestibular stimulation (swinging) triggered seizures. Don't hear that anymore. You might as well blame the brushing.

Barbara

 
Blog Directory