About 3 or 4 months ago, Soren started waking up with a lot of pain in his hips and legs. He would wince in pain and do these silent screams when we would try to stretch him out or pick him up. But once he was up, he was fine. He would kick his legs and become his happy self again. We had no idea what was causing the tightness and pain. I asked his teachers and therapists to keep an eye out for this as well but they hadn't noticed anything.
Then last month, one of his Physical Therapists noted Soren wincing when she was working his legs and hips. So I took him to his pediatrician who did X-rays and everything looked fine. He suggested doing blood tests but thought it actaully might be seizure-related. I thought this might be possible, but it seemed strange since he was only having seizures one or two days a month. And then he had gone that 40 days without anything but still had these morning aches and pains.
But then the other night at 2 am, Soren woke up hungry having not eaten well the day before due to the excessive heat. When I put him back to bed, he started doing this rhythmic facial contortion and body crunch--a seizure. Aaron and I then realized that he has probably been doing this at night, sight unseen, for these past months. Thus the 40 days we thought were seizure-free were merely daytime seizure-free, nighttime seizure-rific (that's not a technical term). The good thing, if there can be a good thing when it comes to seizures, is that Soren seems to recover from these better than other seizures. Still, no seizure is a good seizure.
So what to do? Well, we're going to do blood tests just to confirm there is nothing going on considering all the drugs we've pumped into this boy. Then we're going to work on pumping another drug in! We decided to finally try the Clobazam. I have a small stash of 40 pills provided by another parent. But to get more of this non-FDA approved drug, Soren's neurologist needs to write a letter of medical necessity (because it is a form of Valium) and a prescription. Then the one pharmacy in the US that is allowed to distributed this drug is given this info and sends the meds from New York to UCLA. They then send it to us.
This all may take 2-3 weeks because Soren's doctor is out of town. And I'm sure when he returns, he will be swamped with many requests. In the mean time, I'm checking if we can wean Soren off either the Zonegran or the Lamictal that he is now on.
I'll keep you updated.
Amy
1 comment:
Do you guys have a video monitor in Soren's room, so you can keep an eye on him and hear if he's in distress? We got one from Toy's R Us (I think) that works quite well. We got it after Karis had her 2 hour or so long seizure in the middle of the night. That has given us a lot more peace of mind while we sleep.
Best of luck with the clobazam.That's the one we'll be trying next, too, whenever we need it.
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