Mikail's EEG and Neurologist Appointment

August 17, 2010

J and Mikail waiting to get the EEG show on the road.

Sunday night Mikail went to bed 2 hours late and got up one hour early with no naps allowed until after the EEG test. Now THAT was a challenge. How do you keep a sleepy boy from sleeping? We got to the Stollery early so we found our places for the appointments and then had time for breakfast at the oh so familiar cafeteria. Flashbacks for sure. I didn't expect it to be so weird to be back there.

The EEG went fine. We had a hard time keeping Mikail awake before the recording started so there was lots of loud talking, tickling, poking, and singing happening, but in the end he just slept through anything we did to him. By the time he was wired up, he was fast asleep anyhow, but they managed to get the readings they needed and he woke up right at the end to give them a minute or so of 'awake time' readings. He was very cooperative and slept through most of it. You could see the look of panic on the technicians face when she heard he was a 3 month old baby. We told her she had nothing to worry about...that he does great at these things. We were right.

Following the EEG we had an hour to kill before the neurologist appointment. First we met with the stroke nurse that we met in May during our stay at the Stollery and had meetings with her back then. She is amazing. She checked Mikail over and was very impressed. Then we met Dr. Yaeger, the pediatric neurologist and liked him immediately. He said the EEG came back as NORMAL. Praise the Lord. He said that he is very optimistic about Mikail, but that the first year of his life will tell us more, but there is no reason to believe that anything will go wrong. He is showing normal signs of development and is so glad to see that we are going to physio/occupational therapy already. That usually doesn't start until 8+ months after the visit to the Glenrose Rehab Clinic. Our Pediatrician had him start early, and we are thankful for that because we can guide our play time with Mikail to be a bit more therapeutic, which has helped him overcome any weaknesses he may have had.

Anyhow, with the good EEG results, Dr. Yaeger said that we are going to take him off of phenobarb. PRAISE THE LORD again. It will take 12 weeks to get to no meds. He goes down 1 mL every two weeks so after 12 weeks he will be off of it. We are just to watch for seizure activity but he expects there to be none. This is what I was believing in even though just last week Dr. Langer said not to expect this news until Mikail is a year old. I refused to believe him. We had prayed for and believed in complete healing and I just couldn't let Dr. Langer's warning go to heart. Good thing. ha Anyhow, we are soooo happy with this news. Sooooo blessed.

Mikail trying to stay awake with his little EEG hat on.