Friday, December 16, 2005

Increase in Lamictal

I really think John's seizures just get better and worse on a completely random basis. Things seem to change for no reason at all. John was really doing pretty well for a good week, then he started to get worse again this week. We hadn't changed his drug or diet or anything else that we can think of. He had some stronger head drops this week, and a couple of days of around 20 seizures. Also, earlier this week he was having seizures that would be followed by a couple of minutes of crying. It was like he suddenly was in a state of really deep sadness and it was hard for us to see. But, that only lasted a day or two. Our first thought was that things were getting stronger again. But, Yoshie thinks he just may be more aware now and so he realizes when something happens to him so its an appropriate reaction. Who knows.
He has had a slight fever, and Tylenol seems to actually decrease his seizure count. So, maybe he is just very fragile and that slight temperature is all it takes to put him over the edge.
I talked to the neurology nurse again, who got us an appt for Dec. 30. I'm not sure if he'll adjust the VNS again, or further increase the Lamictal. In the meantime, we increased his Lamictal another half a pill so he is now taking 137.5mg/day. Hopefully we'll see some improvement over the next week.
Last week, we also went to see the Washington County special services dept. to see what sort of aid we qualified for. The good news is that we qualified for financial aid for all sorts of services. The bad news is that the waiting list is 3 years. At least we're on the list now.
We still haven't been able to get a speech therapist to come over. We do have another appt. with the private therapist next month. Yoshie has been working hard on the techniques that we've learned for increasing his speech. He is definately getting better, but at his own sweet pace.

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