Tag Archives: seizures

Start of School

With the start of school happening this week I thought I would jump ahead a bit in my story. Now with a 4th and 6th grader with epilepsy comes having to prepare all their new teachers for the worst case scenario. When you tell a teacher that a child in their class has epilepsy their eyes get big like the OH NO what is going to happen look. When people think of epilepsy they automatically think of the movies where you see a person violently flailing on the ground and to be honest that scares most people. Heck it scares … Continue reading →

Two Kids With Epilepsy

So my middle son has been admitted to the hospital for what we thought was possibly a stroke, his face is droopy and looks like a stroke patient. Turns out he had Bells Palsy and they think this could be caused by a seizure. So with one child with epilepsy already the idea of having a second child with epilepsy is a bit over whelming. I will admit when he was asleep in his bed I did lay there in the dark and cried just a bit. In the morning they ran an MRI and an EEG on him to … Continue reading →

Life With an Epileptic Child

After the first convulsive seizure and our first cluster seizure we were beginning to wonder if this was how our life was going to be from now on. We wondered if this kept up what his life would be when he got older. Would he be able to get his license when he got older? Would he get married and have kids? He was still very young, not even four and he was having to go get valium in his behind to stop seizures. Now this was not quite what I pictured when I thought of our family but this … Continue reading →

Cluster Seizures

The day our son had his first convulsive seizure really hit us hard. I had never been so scared before in my life. You may see seizures on tv or in the movies but when you see them in person it is so much more scary. When it is happening with your child it makes the reality so much scarier than any horror film could even be. We had a problem with friends and family not wanting to spend time with him when we were not around before the first convulsive seizure. I am dreading having to tell anyone that … Continue reading →

Telling People About Epilepsy Diagnosis

What was asked of us when we told her surprised me. She asked if we wanted to return him instead of adopting him!!! I am still shocked to this day that I as asked. What kind of parents would we be if we returned him to foster care? Would a biological mother turn her child over to CPS if they got the same diagnosis? We fell in love with our kids even before we met them I cannot even imagine giving him back. After we notified CPS we had to tell our family, it would have been a little easier … Continue reading →

Our Son Has Epilepsy

We just had our first sleep deprived EEG and we are headed to the pediatric neurologist. I already had a bad feeling in my stomach after seeing all the spikes on the EEG machine. The doctor walks in the room and he had some printouts in his hand. I remember this feeling very well because this was the moment before our son had epilepsy. The doctor went through all these technical terms explaining that our son was having abnormal seizure brain waves showing as spikes on the EEG. That all four areas of the brain were affected and they were … Continue reading →

Does My Son Have Epilepsy?

My oldest son came to be ours when he was three years old, he had been in foster care for a year before him and his brother joined our family. When he came home we knew there would be an adjustment time for him especially because he is the oldest. He barely knew us and we barely knew him, yet here we are a brand new family. We noticed that he would start staring off and we thought it was just him being a normal toddler, spacing out and ignoring his parents. We never realized that this zoning out could … Continue reading →

More Types of Seizures

So far you have read about petit mal seizures also known as absence seizures and grand mal seizures also known as generalized clonic tonic seizures. These are both types of generalized seizures. Generalized seizures are seizures that affect both halves of the brain. With my son we saw on his EEG that he was having spikes in the brain waves in all four areas of his brain. There are sub-types of generalized seizures. They include: Myoclonic seizures, these include spasms of most often occur on both sides of the body. There is no loss of consciousness and the person may … Continue reading →

Does my Son Have Epilepsy?

When you have kids whether you have them biologically or you adopt them like we did, you hope that they can live a wonderful, strong, productive lives. When your child has a medical condition, your dreams for them get a little less clear. When our kids were placed with us our oldest was three and as far as we knew they were a healthy set of boys who only needed a family to love. It was not too long after we welcomed them into our hearts and family that we noticed our oldest son was zoning out quite frequently. We … Continue reading →

Epilepsy in Cats

Epilepsy is relatively rare in cats, but it does happen. We have a regular guest at the cats-only boarding facility with epilepsy; a friend has a cat who has seizures. In general, there are two types of seizure disorders in cats: Secondary/acquired epilepsy — the seizures are a symptom of another condition, like high blood pressure, a tumor, or trauma. This type of epilepsy can appear at any age. Idiopathic epilepsy — there is no underlying cause for the seizures. This often develops between the ages of one and three years. Epilepsy in felines doesn’t always look like epilepsy in … Continue reading →