Abby's "Tic"

For about a year now, my 8 year old daughter, Abby, has had a "tic". She would roll her eyes as if finding words to say or even looking very tired. My son, Sam also had tics at her age. He would do very strong blinks and fidget with his fingers. Tics commonly show up in this age range and her pediatrician thought nothing of it when we brought it to his attention. In the past couple of months however, we noticed an increase in dropped drinks. She even dropped my sister's baby once. We've always considered her to be somewhat clumsy, tripping over her own feet sometimes...we just thought of it as a personality trait. Her teachers became concerned it was more. After Spring Break, she had an increasing amount of eye rolling. Her teacher brought her to the nurse who observed her. She dropped a box of band-aids while counting out an amount for her classroom. The nurse called me and explained their concerns. We used this as an excuse to bring it up to her pediatrician. We brought her in and he asked some questions. He felt the dropped drinks and clumsy falls were good enough reason to see a neurologist.

Yesterday was our appointment with the neurologist. He asked us about seizures in our family. Ted had about 5 seizures as a boy and just grew out of them. They were different from Abby's eye roll...more severe and interruptive. He fell on the soccer field once from a seizure. My mom had seizures and so did her uncle. My mom's seizure's were from a benign brain tumor. He asked us how long they last, how often they happen and what types of situations can bring them on. I notice it a lot when she's talking to me. When she rolls her eyes, she stops talking and then just resumes right afterwards. I notice them when she is focused on a fine motor task and it's like she's catching her breath when she tilts her head back to roll her eyes. Sometimes the eye roll is behind a long blink.

The doctor did an exam of her. He had her walk in a straight line with one foot in front of the other. Her balance was fine. He asked her to breath in and out rapidly as if trying to blow out a candle that won't extinguish. After a couple of minutes he told her to stop. When he was finished, he sat down with us. I asked him what he thought it was...and he said "absence seizures". Ted and I recognized the term from our own research. Ted felt strongly that this is what she had. I still felt she just had tics. But this doctor was now confirming Ted's suspicions. This is a good description from Wikipedia: Some people with absence seizures have purposeless movements during their seizures, such as a jerking arm or rapidly blinking eyes. Others have no noticeable symptoms except for brief times when they are "out of it." Immediately after a seizure, the person can resume whatever he or she was doing. These seizures can happen a few times a day or in some cases hundreds of times a day to the point that the person cannot concentrate in school or other situations. Childhood absence epilepsy usually stops when the child reaches puberty. Absence seizures usually have no lasting effect on intelligence or other brain functions.

Medication helps to control them and limit their life. It may take only 2 years to grow out of them with medication as opposed to maybe 5-7 without. An EEG can measure the brain activity and show signs of an absence seizure. He told us he wanted Abby to take this test tomorrow (today). Last night, we had to wash her hair to help the nodes stick better. She had to stay up two hours later than normal and wake up two hours earlier than normal. She only got 5 hours of sleep. Sleep deprivation was important for the test so her seizures would increase for the test. They also want to monitor her brains activity during sleep so it would be important for her to be tired enough to sleep in the doctor's office. Only one parent can sit in the room with her. Ted agreed to let me do it. He will meet us afterward to talk to the doctor and discuss the results.

I'm tired. I got up early with Abby while Ted stayed up late with her, but I still feel I didn't get much sleep. The kids are crabby...and I just want them to take care of themselves. I'm looking forward to getting the appointment done and finding the results. I'm not really worried about the results because she's already experiencing them, after this, it will just have a name and we'll know how to better deal with them. By nature, they get worse if they are left untreated. I'm not excited about Abby taking medicine daily...but it could be so much worse. Growing up, I saw my mom have seizures that actually scared me. Her face would contort and sometimes she would make a noise. It took a while for me to get used to them and my dad would set the example of how to be while she had one. With medicine they would be controlled down to just blank stares for maybe 30 seconds and then a short "coming to" period. They started when I was born and lasted through to my college years when they discovered she had a very small, benign brain tumor. She went from 30 pills a day to maybe one because of scar tissue that would still aggravate her. Anything will seem mild compared to what my mom went through.

During the EEG, they will stimulate her with things that can bring on seizures with those who are prone to them: strobe lights, hyperventilating for 3-5 minutes, and fatigue. I'm actually looking forward to watching this test. My sick sense of fascination makes me want to take a picture of her with all the nodes on her head. I might try to sneak one in with no flash...or maybe I'll just ask permission before the test is administered. My neighbor says the junk they attach the nodes to her head with, might be hard to get off before First Communion. I don't need to worry about that right now! Don't feed these thoughts into my head!

Sometimes I can get into the heady medical stuff that barely makes any sense but I feel like I'm decoding a secret language among doctors. Here is some good stuff:
In typical absence seizures...
--Background activity is normal (I assume in the brain...in between seizures?...or it could mean while one area of the brain shows the seizure, the other areas look normal?)
--A routine awake recording is often pathognomonic (huh??...looked it up...means that a routine awake recording will diagnose absence seizures)
--Bursts of frontally predominant, generalized 3-Hz spike-and-wave complexes are seen during the seizure (yah, whatever)
--Bursts of generalized polyspikes and waves (multiple spike-and-slow-wave complexes) may also be seen, especially during sleep and in syndromes with older age of onset (older is 7-14 years...younger is 4-7 years)

Anyway, that's enough of that. I always think about people who might be searching this stuff and get my blog. I like to provide as much info as possible...but in the meantime risk boring everyone else. I'm leaving in a half hour. I better go. I will blog the results...