...so overwhelmingly intense

Last night Lauren was so animated. There were a lot of visitors and she seemed very happy. Sandra confided to me though that later, after everyone was gone, Lauren had a meltdown. She said it happens a lot when it is just her and Lauren together. Lauren will break down to her Mommy, cry and say that she wants to leave. I think those are the hardest times for her, late at night and post-seizure. Although she is "getting used" to her environment, it is still a difficult place to be.

The night before, Jessica spent the night and got a taste of "sleeping" in the hospital. Lauren complained of pain in her ribs and tightness in her chest, prompting a portable chest x-ray in the middle of the night. It turned out to be nothing (probably too long in the bed), but they have to rule out pneumonia or an embolism.

Dr. Marsh, the neurologist who has rotated on for Dr. Clancy (new month, new attending, and they threw all our food out of the refrigerator!) said that he and Dr. Dlugos (our primary neurologist) were thinking of stimulating Lauren's brain to confirm some information on the seizures and to pinpoint motor areas. Basically, they will use the electrodes to produce electrical activity rather than monitor it. By putting electrical stimulation in different electrodes they hope to see which ones trigger a seizure and what parts of the body are affected.

This morning Lauren had another grand mal, out of nowhere. She called it herself. She looked at her Mom and said "I'm going to have a grand mal". It probably lasted 45 seconds, but her lips turned blue, which we have never seen before. When Sandra got a hold of me, she was clearly shaken. Lauren had what has become her typical post grand mal reaction, which is similar to migrane symptoms. No light, no sound, give me morphine and let me sleep. Sandra said it would probably postpone the stimulation, so I went to the office and tried to work.

Turns out Lauren recovered a couple of hours later and Sandra called me to say they were going to do the stimulation at 2 pm. When I walked into Lauren's hospital room it was standing room only with doctors, residents and EEG techs. They basically put plugs into jacks in a control panel reminiscent of an old fashioned switchboard, checked it on the EEG monitor, and then applied stimulation (ie. electricity, which freaks me out; as advanced as our medicine is, some of it seems awfully barbaric). They would ask Lauren to roll her shoulder or wriggle her toes and see what sort of reaction she had. Sometimes there was no reaction, sometimes a tingling, once the leg involuntarily bent at the knee and moved towards her chest, and lastly she went into a grand mal. Once we got her stabilized, the neurologists said they got exactly what they wanted, thanked us and left with their entourage. Dr. Marsh did come in 10 minutes later to check on Lauren and confirmed that they were upping her Dilantin to 50 mg am and 100 mg pm. He said that the PREP team would discuss her case Thursday afternoon and said that surgery could be done as early as Friday.

Sometimes this shit is just so overwhelimgly intense. Sandra and I were both shaken. Jessica saw her first grand mal and was afraid she was going to pass out. When I left to come here and update the blog, they were comforting Lauren who was wimpering that her head hurt. I just couldn't take it, I had to leave.