An "event"

Today was a rough day. This is just one part of it and I'm only explaining it here because it's too long to put into a status on Facebook and not everyone I know has a Facebook account.

Austin had an EEG today. We haven't had any seizures or anything that we know of, but we are checking to make sure he's not having seizure activity causing him to blank out and lose focus. We have always wondered if Austin was ADHD (just not as hyperactive as some kids). He has a lot of the signs of it, but we never wanted to do something drastic if he didn't need it. Basically, if he was having problems in school, that's when we would be worried. I think it's safe to say that it's affecting him in school (both by my observations and his teacher's) and it's causing him to not like school. A Kindergartener shouldn't dislike school. Even after 4 days of not going, he doesn't want to go tomorrow. That's not something I like to hear.

So, to rule out seizure activity causing the focus problems, an EEG was scheduled and then we will look into other things. Monday was the day, but since he was sick, it was moved to this afternoon.

After putting the leads on Austin, the first test they do is having him blow on a pinwheel for 3 minutes. It's really hard to do and the kids are exhausted by the time they are done. With a minute left or so, you could tell something wasn't right. Just looking at his face and his eyes, I knew something was off. He started making weird sounds and wouldn't respond to us. I can’t even describe his movements…just abnormal and he said the word four (or for?) a couple of times and some other sounds. He stopped for a moment, then started the same behavior. We finally got him to snap out of it (or else he snapped out of it on his own) and he started crying. He couldn’t tell us what was wrong, but he didn't want to continue. We talked him down a bit and he was able to do the rest of the EEG (this was at the very beginning). He said a couple of times that he didn't want to do it while we were sitting there, but I tried to distract him.

Later, when I was able to talk to him before we picked up Colten, I asked him why he was crying; if something had happened. We didn't tell him what happened and didn't talk about it too much (it was a tech that administered the EEG), so I didn't think he knew what had happened. He said that he went back. I didn't understand and then he said he went back to the first day of school. That he wasn't really there, but that he saw the first day of school. I'm guessing he wasn't aware of what was going on.

We'll find out what exactly it was next week. The tech said that it was either a seizure or not enough oxygen getting to the brain. Sort of like when you hyperventilate. Either way, I am glad it happened under a controlled environment. If it was a seizure, this showed us that we need to increase his meds to make sure he’s covered in as many situations as possible.

This is small potatoes compared to what some people are having to watch their children go through. I am thankful, everyday, that our children are all pretty healthy. We have the regular childhood illnesses to get through, but a hospital is not my children's home for weeks at a time. We are experts through real-life situations on anything in the medical world and we don't know all kinds of scary terms that require a conversation just to explain them. I'll happily take the problems we have to face. They may seem big sometimes and I can get stressed at times dealing with them, but I feel that I am pretty lucky when I look at the whole picture.