So this is so over due and I apologies. The busyness of the holiday season, along with an 11 yr old who likes to lord over my computer has kept me from updating Lily's blog. :-)

So first let's start with November before we tackle December and yes, unfortunately there was a seizure in each month. But on the bright side they are starting to stretch out again, in between that is.

So November 11, Lily had a seizure. This one took me totally by surprise because her Dr had just upped her Lamictal again so I figured we would be good for a bit. Guess Epilepsy showed me once again nothing is set in stone when dealing with it. I panicked. I often wonder when I am going to stop panicking with each seizure. After all it has (now) been over two years. Don't get me wrong I don't expect to become indifferent towards them or anything but a little bit of calm would sure help. There has only been a handful of seizures I have been calm through and I am always so very proud of myself. Anyway, back to that seizure. Taz did not have the chance to alert because I had not moved him to the bed yet and as usual Lil's pulse-ox went off. This seizure was like many of her others, however it lasted longer than usual after she received the Diastat, which of course did nothing for my panic. She did come out of it as the EMT's arrived. Over night stay in the hospital and by 9 am the next morning she was back to her normal happy energetic self.

So I have been really struggling with the question of the Lamictal. 3 times increase and within 2 days she has a seizure. However she had a large increase in Oct that did not lead to a seizure. What to do, what to do? Well it was decided to keep going up on the Lamictal for now but to go up slower.

So now lets jump ahead to Dec 20. Next seizure but this one was a lot different. She had a very busy day and was wiped out. We laid together and I got her to sleep. I had justt put on her pulse-ox on and hadn't had a chance to get Taz over to us (Lily does not like him to lay with her so we have to wait till she is asleep to move him to her) when all off a sudden she (what seems like) wakes up. She just starts talking away and is very animated. I was wrestling with my denial self at this point because I wanted to believe that it was not a seizure but I knew that as tired as she was she should have not woke up 10 minutes after she fell asleep looking like she had not even been asleep (and trust me she was out!).

So I call Tracy over and get Lily to lay back down. We keep asking her if she is ok, what her name is, who we are, etc, etc. Then her eyes went glassy and she looked really very confused. That's when I decided to grab the phone and the Diastat. Tracy called 911 while I prepaid the Diastat. At this point we weren't 100 % certain she was having a seizure (Ok I should say that our denial was muttering in our ears) so I decided that i would insert the Diastat. If she didn;t react I would give it to her. If she reacted I would not give it to her. For those who aren't familiar with Diastat, it is an emergency med given to stop a seizure that won't stop and it is given rectally. She did not react. So it was glaringly obvious that it was a seizure.

So if you look at it from a stand point of the time she no longer answered us and her body went stiff till she came out of it, the seizure was maybe a minute. However I think the seizure started the moment she opened her eyes. From what I understand, people with complex partial seizures (which is what Lily has) sometimes they can still respond. So in that case it was between 10-12 minutes. Another trip to the ER and another over night stay at Children's. Released by early afternoon, but it took her a bit longer in the morning to bounce back. Sometimes she is ready to hit the ground running, most of the time she is. But sometimes not so much. I can never tell based on her seizure how she is going to be. Sometimes she will have a terrible and I think that we are gonna be in the hospital for days and then next morning she is fine. Oh Epilepsy you are a fickle beast!

Since the seizure appeared so much milder than any of the others she has had we are going to keep cruising on the Lamictal. We will see how things pan out.

Oh and Monday night (Lil's seizure was on Tuesday night) Taz slept on Lily's legs with his faced pressed on to them from nose to forehead. He NEVER sleeps like that. He always sleep with his back against her facing away from her. And he has not slept that way with her since, so I think our Mr. Taz was picking up that something was coming. Good boy!!

Oh and one other thing, after the EMT's took Lily out, our other dog Isis walked over to the spot where Lily had had her seizure and proceeded to sniff, intensely from where her head had been down to where her toes had been and continued to sniff for a good three or four minutes. Is she picking things up from Taz? That would be cool!

As alway, thank you for reading! Lily um, decided to cut her hair awhile back. Here in the next week I will try and get some pic up of her new do!