So we have had our 3 year old son up all night, actually he did get to sleep two hours, and we are headed to have our son tested for epilepsy. This is a whole new area for us, we have only been parents for a few months and now we are having one of the kids test for epilepsy.
It is very scary for us to walk into having my oldest son tested for epilepsy. I honestly did not know what the testing would be like and for me it was scary I cannot even imagine it from the perspective of a kid. We walked into this room and they had him hop on the table and turned a tv on for him to be preoccupied with while they got him ready. The tech was great and explained everything he was doing.
For those that do not know what an EEG is I will give a quick explanation of it.
First they take measurements on the child’s head
They make marks all on his head at certain increments
They get some form of cement, it really has a strong smell.
They put the cement on and then place the wired leads on.
They repeat this until he has wires attached to his complete head.
When it comes to diagnosis of epilepsy they do multiple tests to see if anything causes the EEG machine to spike. I had done some research on what an EEG looks like if it shows a seizure or something that is just not right and basically if there are large spikes on the screen, the neurologist was going to have something to talk with us about. I am sure I do not remember all the steps they did but they did a few minutes of just monitoring his brain waves. Next, they shut the lights off and put a strobe light on, some epileptic seizures are brought on by flashing lights. When the flashing lights are done, they try to get the child to fall asleep. They leave the lights off, had us rub his head to try to induce drowsiness, this works great especially when the child has only had 2 hours of sleep.
I was watching the techs screen throughout the test and I knew I was going to be hearing some bad news from the neurologist. When the test was over the tech used some alcohol to loosen the cement and removed the leads and our first EEG was done.