Follow up EEG

Kale was diagnosed with Infantile spasms when he was 4 months corrected, he had his spasms controlled by 3 months later. We tried a drug called Vigabatrin first which didn't work then we tried ACTH ( adrenocorticotropic hormone) this was an injection we gave him I.M. (intermuscular) in his thigh every other day. This drug caused weight gain, and crankyness which I think was due to his huge appetite. In short which I will update on Thursday, Kale has has lots of EEG's one of which we are going to tomorrow Wednesday October 20th 2010. So I will be very busy tomorrow with no time to blog. So I thought I would write a brief history on his experience with I.S.(infantile spasms).

Its sad to say but going to the hospital is such a normal event now that its not scary. The only thing I get scared about when going there is that they will keep us over night for " observation" which is code word for they dont believe what your saying so they want the nurses to see it first hand. Which would be okay with me if they actually observed as opposed to checking in and asking me what I observed, I could do that from home! Anyway......

When we go to EEG's we head straight up to the pediatric ward, unless we are having a concious EEG which means we wont be giving him Chloral Hydrate which is a sedative and hypnotic drug as well as a chemical reagent and precursor. But tomorrow we want him sedated to do our check up, so off to pediatric we go. Oh by the way the reason we want to be at pediatrics for the sedated EEG is that a nurse need to be present incase of complications. Which so far we have never had a complication. Typically I get the nurse to put in an NG tube (nasal gastric tube(tube that goes down his nose to his tummy)) to give the chloral Hydrate because it taste like pure alchohol and Kale won't drink it. A NG tube is perfectly safe. The nurses measure how far the will put the tube in from his nose to the appropiate location in the tummy, then shove the tube down quickly before he screams. The nurses then push air through a syringe attatched to the tube into his tummy listening for it to not go into his lungs. We also pull back fluids from his tube to test the acidity level. If the chemical strip shows the fluid we pulled back is of the right acidity it means its in his tummy, because there should be no acidic fluids in his lungs let alone any fluids. And that his how we check placement of the NG tube for administering Chloral Hydrate.

So long story short, Kale will be getting a follow up EEG just to follow up and ensure this randome movement and staring I see him doing isnt seizures as well as to reassure that the Infantile Spasms havnt come back, and possibly see if some of the "abnormal" brain wave activity we were seeing on previous EEG's has tapered off a bit.

This is an EEG of Hypsarythmia which is a type of wave pattern shown to be infantile spasms

See how its irratic with no rythem.
This is a "normal eeg in a child

This is more patterned rythamic. There is alot more to a EEG which is hard to explain, but this is the raw idea of what we see.

Anyway like I said I will write more and clean this post up a bit on thursday! Thanks for reading!