New drug

We saw the developmental pediatrician yesterday, and she prescribed Metadate CD for John's hyperactivity. This drug is the same as Ritalin LA. One capsule lasts for about 8 hours. We HATE giving John more drugs, but it seemed like it was time to try something. He can't concentrate very well, which makes it really hard to learn anything. We're hoping this will help him to focus, without taking away anything from his personality. Side effects include increase in heart rate, decrease in appetitite, and of course a lowering of seizure threshold. :(

Today was the first dose and according to Yoshie, it isn't working - he's as active as ever. This is a small dose, and there are many other meds to choose from, but of course we were hoping the first one would do the trick.

Also, John's quick little seizures have been increasing in number so we increased his Keppra recently to 2.5ml twice a day. John is still doing great, but we want to stop this increase in seizures before it gets out of hand.

Johns cut seems to be healing nicely. He's going to have quite a scar, but other than that seems to have no other issues.

cut

It's been two days since John got cut, so we had to change the bandage tonight. It took both of us to hold him down, but we got it done. The incision looks good. I think it will heal pretty well.

More excitement

John has been doing pretty well lately.  We have seen some very small seizures come back.  These are just a split-second tightening and a slight head-drop.   So far, we've only seen them when he is really agitated.   We also got an appointment with the developmental pediatrician to look at options for his hyperactivity.  That is on March 25.

Yesterday, we got to spend the afternoon in the ER again.   John was climbing on a picture that we had leaning against a wall (it wasn't hanging, because we thought he might pull it down).  Anyway, this was a large picture with a glass front.  The frame broke and the glass broke and John got a huge cut on his back as he fell on it.   Yoshie screamed that we needed to get to the ER so off we went.  I didn't even see the cut until we pulled up at the ER.  Wow.  It was very nasty.  Probably 4 inches long, and 1cm wide, with the fat coming out.  He was screaming so they took us right back.  The doctor took a look and said that it looked like a "clean" cut, and didn't hurt anything inside.  I guess we're lucky in that sense.  It easily could have gone a little deeper and done more damage.  
This required general anethesia, but he had just eaten so we had to wait 90 minutes before they could do anything.  That was a long 90 minutes (and included several small seizures).   They had 5 nurses in there to hold him down to give him the shots, and they told us he would get sleepy in 20 minutes.  About 30 seconds later he was completely out.  It happened so fast, that we all got alarmed and the doctor was called in again.  Vital signs were fine, so he started stitching him up right away.  4 internal stitches, and 18 external.   We had to wait another 90 minutes for him to sort of wake up, and we were discharged.  As soon as we got to the car, he threw up everywhere.   We decided to go home anyway.   He was in a lot of pain, and couldn't stand more than a few seconds.  By about 9pm, he started feeling better.  This morning, he seems 100% back to his normal self.  He's climbing everything and his cut doesn't even seem to bother him.   It's going to be a challenge to keep the bandage on, but so far so good.

I only had my cheap cell phone camera with me, but you can get an idea of the cut: