EEG and VNS

We went in for John's EEG last week, but there was some mix-up and we were finally sent home and forced to reschedule. We got rescheduled for next Monday (Feb. 25) at 7:30am.
Today, we met with John's neurosurgeon to discuss replacing his VNS. We got some x-rays taken just to make sure the leads were still OK - they were. And, it turns out that they had a cancellation and were able to get John in next Tuesday for the surgery! So, his EEG will go from Monday morning to early Tuesday morning, at which point they'll remove the leads and take him right to surgery. It will be a rough couple of days, but nice to get it over with all at once. If all goes well, the surgery will take less than 30 minutes and we'll be home Tuesday evening.

In other news, John really seems to be doing better on the lower Felbatol dose. He just seems more "with it". Thankfully, we didn't see any increase in seizures at the lower dose either. So, we're hopeful that we can lower it even more after we get the VNS working again. John has continued to have daily clusters of small seizures, but I don't think they have gotten any worse since my last post.

John seemed to like school for months. But, for some reason he cries when you say the word "school" now. The teachers say he is fine after awhile, so I guess it's just separation anxiety. We're not sure why it suddenly came on, but it might also have something to do with his reduced Felbatol level. John knows the route to his school, and he'll cry as long as you stay on the same route. If you turn off course at any point, he quits crying. So, some parts of his brain seem to work quite well. Sure hope the language part starts working one of these days.