Sunday, March 05, 2006

Rash, oh no!

John has been sick off and on for a couple of weeks now. Recently he has started running a slight fever. Friday he developed a rash over his whole body. Since a deadly rash is one side effect of the Lamictal, I called the neurologist, who said I should make an appointment with his pediatrician ASAP just to make sure it isn't the dreaded Stevens-Johnson rash. Well, it wasn't. It turned out to just be a normal childhood rash. And, it cleared up by Saturday evening.
With the fever, etc. Johns seizures became worse. One day he had over 30 seizures. His seizures are different again. They last a few seconds now and sometimes include shaking. It feels like he is going in to a grand-mal every time, and we keep the VNS magnets close-by at all times now. However, these seizures are different in that he doesn't seem to lose consciousness. In fact, he has fallen a couple of times from the seizures, but he is able to break the fall with his arms. That is a huge improvement over the drop seizures that he endured for so long. So, maybe this seizure type, while appearing more frightening, is actually an improvement?
In any case, the number of daily seizures has returned to a more normal 10-15/day as his health has returned. He's had a few days where we didn't see any seizures after about 5pm.
We're getting more relaxed about what he eats, and it hasn't seemed to make any difference. We went to the zoo the other day and he actually got to eat an ice cream cone - maybe his first ever?

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