Happy Halloween

From my little Vampira and Army Ranger...

Surviving the EEG

Thursday night went smoothly. My kids go to bed (and wake up) very early. Staying up until 10-11 PM proved to be quite a chore for my little man. He didn't once ask me to go to bed (he understood what we needed to do) but he'd look at me every few minutes with these pitifully sleepy eyes that were just BEGGING to close. He went right to sleep when it was time and I think it's safe to say that 3 AM came much too fast for both of us. We had blankets and cuddled on the couch until 5:30 AM - watching Yin Yang Yo (gag - one of his new favorites) and a cute 30-minute HBO special about the new Bee Movie. I think we each inadvertenly dozed off at one point - but not for more than a few minutes. We dropped my daughter off at school at 7:45 AM, hit Starbucks and got a car wash before heading to the neurologists' office. The tech was 45 minutes late getting us in! I'll just never understand that... Chase was so tired in the waiting room - it broke my heart not to let him sleep a little. I worried if I did, though, that he wouldn't sleep during the actual test. The wait was long - but a number of armed guards and a handful of handcuffed and shackled prisoners in orange jumpsuits (apparently there for some type of testing of their own!) certainly kept us from being bored.

The tech was a funny little man who had an odd way with kids. We survived, though, and Chase did manage to fall (sound!) asleep right on command when the tech needed him to. An electrode cap was used for the EEG instead of individual nodes. The prep for the cap took about 35 minutes. I was told that it would've taken 3 hours were it not for the cap! The actual EEG took about half an hour. We have an appointment with the neuro next month to discuss the results. I asked the tech if he saw anything unusual but he told me he couldn't give me any information. The test was very interesting to watch. The only thing causing me concern now is that the tech mentioned initially that he would have to have Chase hyper-ventilate (a practice used to induce seizures in people prone to them) at one point during the test. He never did, though and I can only assume this is because he either 1.)forgot or 2.)didn't need to because seizure activity was observed without it.

I'll post the results when I get them...

A Boys' Brain

Last July (per the recommendation of our school psych), I asked my sons' pediatrcian to evaluate him for ADD/ADHD. She explained that she would need to refer us to a neurologist and we went to see him just after school started in August. After what appeared to be a thorough physical examination (and an extensive Q & A with me), he didn't seem to be convinced that he had ADD or ADHD. Instead, he asked me to have an MRI and a Sleep EEG done on my son. The EEG will be done first and has finally been scheduled to take place on Friday October 26. I'd be lying to say that I wasn't nervous about it. I was instructed to keep him up hours past his usual bedtime the night before and then to wake him at 3 AM on the day of the test. He apparently has to be very fatigued (asleep, preferrably) during the test. The neurologist is wondering if he's having petit mal seizures and apparently this EEG will determine whether he is or not. I'm not certain what the MRI will tell us - I've often read about brain-mapping in Autistic children, though, and am curious to see the results.

Thankfully, my boy is a brave one and he's actually excited about the tests. (He especially likes the fact that he's going to get to stay up late on a school night - hah!) What a little trooper!