I am firing up the blog again, to help keep all of you informed on our next journey. We would appreciate your prayers as we move forward. We also hope that what we learn along the way may be of use to others who may also take this journey.
As most of you know, Julia has epilepsy, and has been having seizures about 10-12 times per month on a fairly regular pattern. She will go a week or more without a seizure, and then have a flurry of seizures packed into one week. We have tried a variety of combinations of medications and also varied the dosages, but to no avail. The seizures have kept right on occurring on their regular schedule. At the same time we have been doing this, we have been going through a series of EEGs, MRIs, PET scans, CT scans, more MRIs, which has gotten us to the point we are at now.
We are headed in the direction of brain surgery to try to find and eliminate the source of the seizures. (That is probably not the correct terminology, but you get the idea.) On Thursday, March 19th, we made our latest trek up to Children's Hospital in Birmingham. The most delightful aspect to this trip was we had to be there at 6:30 am, which meant leaving here around 4:30 am, which meant Libby had to get up at 3:00 am. We had a quick CT scan to start the day, and then an hour long MRI. Julia had to have anesthesia for the MRI, so she was a bit groggy for a while. Then we had a lengthy and very informative consultation with the neurologist. She explained the procedures coming up, and answered all the questions we asked of her. The next step is a procedure called an SEEG (stereoelectroencephalography). Rather than trying to explain this, take a look at this web page - it will explain it very well.
http://my.clevelandclinic.org/ccf/media/files/Epilepsy_Center/SEEG%20Fact_Sheet_022210.pdf
This procedure could be scheduled at any time, but they might wait until school is done for the year, so it could be the middle of May. We will keep you all posted.
