In Which Connor Has A Whole Bunch More Seizures

Well, Connor's now had eighteen seizures in the past three days.  Which is sort of a lot.

Obviously he missed his school field day this morning, and when he'd had his first three seizures before ten in the morning again (he ended up having seven total today) I called the neurology nurse line and left a message.  I figured that even though Connor has an appointment with them tomorrow morning I might as well give them a heads up that his neurons seemed to have taken up tap dancing again. 

So I got a call back pretty quickly, and the nurse asked me to bring him in to get his medication levels checked.  This is pure speculation on my part, but I'm thinking that maybe they suspect he's overdosing on Lamictal.  The new drug he's on, Depakote, has the side effect of making the Lamictal way more effective, which could mean that his current dose is now too high rather than too low like it was before.  And of course, pretty much any time you end up with too much of a seizure drug in your system, it causes you to have seizures.  Connor's meds are sort of a delicate balancing act.

Thankfully we got the amazing phlebotomist (or in layman's terms, the Blood Draw Guy) who works at Children's.  For those of you who go to Children's in Seattle, this guy's name is Hector and seriously-- he's incredible.  He finds a vein on the first try and puts the needle in so quickly and cleanly that Connor doesn't even notice.  Connor's not exactly an easy kid to get blood out of, either.  So we're always happy when we see Hector around-- I saw him out in the hallway by a lucky chance and pounced on him. 

Don't get me wrong-- the other phlebotomists there are all great too.  But Hector is amazing.

So we'll find out how things looked when we go in tomorrow morning.  If we're lucky than the medication balance will end up being the issue and it'll be a quick fix.  I guess we'll just have to see!

~Jess