The battery was fine. So, the increase in seizure activity means something else is going on.
We asked the doctor if maybe John just needed a low dose of Lamictal to control the longer convulsive seizures. Even though it is not considered therapeutic, he says that he sees cases all the time where a low dose of Lamictal helps kids. So, we may end up going back on a low dose of Lamictal at some point. Before we go there, though, we want to give Felbatol a shot at a higher dose, and then try playing with the VNS settings to see if we can get better control.
We increased his Felbatol dose from 6ml/day to 7ml/day a couple of days ago. We'll see in the next 4-5 days if this has any effect.
The doctor also said that since the VNS doesn't seem to have any adverse effects at all at the current setting, that we can certainly try some stronger settings with that. He was ready to update the VNS settings yesterday, but we wanted to hold off since we had just increased his med doseage. We did increase his magnet ampage to 2.5mA, though. Even at this level, it doesn't seem to bother John at all.

John had 3 longer seizures yesterday. Still only about 5-8 seconds each, but with convulsions. The good news is that the seizure last night stopped immediately with the VNS magnet swipe. Maybe the VNS still offers us some hope!
As of 11:30 this morning, I've seen maybe 10 small "normal" seizures, but no larger ones. That is good news, as we've been seeing a larger one almost every morning lately.