Monday, March 21, 2005

pre-op

Today we went for John's pre-op appt. His VNS surgery is 1 week from today. It was mostly just answering questions and doing some paperwork. He did have to give blood again. We were able to see the post-op area, etc. It's sort of nice to know exactly what to expect next week. John is scheduled for first thing Monday morning. We have to be at the hospital by 7am. I suppose by lunchtime, it will all be done.

There hasn't been a lot of changes with his seizure activity over the last few days. He is still having a lot more frequent drops than we've ever seen before. There might be a slight trend towards fewer clusters and more actual seizures. Again, we don't know if this is good or bad, but I think this is due to the Felbatol finally getting out of his system. He only had 22 clusters today, which is his best since Mar. 7.
Unfortunately, John had a 99.8 temperature again this evening. We really, really don't want him to get sick this week. We cannot easily reschedule this surgery, due to our changing insurance plan.

Since things haven't leveled off yet, we're still cruising at a 2.5:1 ratio with the diet. The glucose numbers finally have climbed into the upper 60's, as we would expect at this ratio. It always takes about a week after a diet change to actually see any change. Ketones are lower, as well. They are now generally in the 3-4 range at night. This is a good range for many kids for seizure control. Not so for John.

Just to prove that John is a happy guy, here is a video of him helping with the housework.