I turns out that a "24 hour" EEG is not necessarily 24 hours at all. They just want to make sure that they get a good sampling of his seizures. Since John only had 1 seizure type, and had a series of them hourly, they had more than enough data by morning. We were told we would be able to stop the EEG as soon as they could get someone in to remove the leads. Then, we'd probably be able to go home. We were happy to hear that we could go home, but it was a little unsettling that we were going to leave the hospital while John was actually in a worse state than when we came in.
There was some mix-up in scheduling, and we had to wait a few long hours to get the leads removed. We were able to unplug the device mid-morning, so he could at least leave the room (with a bunch of wires sticking out of his head).
When the guy finally arrived to remove the leads, it was obvious he didn't want to be there. He was so rough with John, and completely ignored John's crying, etc. It was probably the most traumatic thing all week, from John's viewpoint.
We got the MRI results in the morning as well. No problems. Again, this was a big relief. It began to look like John was one of these cases where the reason behind the seizures cannot be determined.
I was able to ask some more intelligent questions by this point, but the resident doctor couldn't really answer them. We still didn't know how to classify John's epilepsy. She said he was having atonic drops, which is when the muscles completely lose their function and you fall to the floor. To us, it seemed like his head was being forced down, and he never actually fell.
We left the hospital with a prescription for Valproic Acid, even though we thought he was on more than that. They gave us instructions to go to the ER if things got worse, but that we didn't need to call an ambulance unless the seizure lasted more than 5 minutes. John's seizures usually lasted less than 1 second. 5 minutes would seem like an eternity.
We also made an appt. to see the neurologist 5 days later, even though she was "out of plan" with my insurance.
