Discharge Day

Saturday morning we woke up at eight o'clock. It was the first night of our stay that we slept the whole night through without interruption. I was hoping that the anesthesia had worn off but it hadn't quite yet. Izabelle was quite grouchy and was sick of being stuck in bed. The doctors came to see us one last time. I asked them all my questions. Why does Izabelle have seizures?… they were still unsure. They told me that Izabelle has both frontal lobe and temporal lobe seizures. Does Izabelle also have Absence seizures when she does nothing but stare during a seizure?… the doctor said that Izabelle has complex partial seizures and even if her body doesn't show physical signs except for staring or taking a pause that both types of seizures they saw are considered complex partial. Izabelle had about six clinical seizures a day when we were in the hospital. About half where her 'classic' seizures where there were physical signs such as bringing her hands to her face and making noises. The other half were harder to detect physically but were coming up on the EEG. He did say that the two different types of seizures had a different seizure pattern on the EEG. Then I asked, what do we do now? He said that we would have to wait 5-6 weeks for results from the neurology team but at this point it wasn't clear if Izabelle was a surgical candidate or not. He said there were options of more pharmaceuticals and diet therapy which I already knew. I told the team that Izabelle was having one or two seizures daily before we were admitted on her current medications. They suggested I call the office on Monday for medication changes as well as to make a follow up appointment. I then asked, Are all these seizures affecting how Izabelle can learn?… I got the same response that I've heard time and time again… it is common for children with seizure disorders to have difficulty learning. I was left disheartened… had I just put my child through all this for nothing?… I was hoping for more answers. After the doctors left we had breakfast and spent a lot of time waiting for the EEG techs to come remove all the leads from Izabelle's head. My poor child got so antsy and fed up that she started to tear off her medical bracelets herself. I called the nurse station and told them that we had been waiting too long. They contacted our nurse again. When she arrived she took Izabelle's IV out. I'm glad she did because I'm sure Izabelle was headed there next. Izabelle cried as I started to take the gauze off her head to prepare for her leads to be taken off.  After the EEG tech arrived and removed the leads I soaked Izabelle's hair in conditioner and shampoo to help dislodge the glue and wrapped her hair in a towel as she watched sponge bob(I am so so sick of sponge bob!!!). Then we got in the shower together and I combed as much glue out of Izabelle's hair without making her miserable. Once dressed Izabelle realized she was 'FREE' and excitedly pranced around the room. We ended up waiting another two hours to be discharged. We were both fed up… I was ready to leave without signing the darn discharge papers but they finally came.  We made it out of the city without any wrong turns. I drove exhaustively as Izabelle slept soundly in the back seat but we got home safely. Thanks to wonderful friends we had a warm meal, groceries, a shoveled path and happy cats to come home to.