A recap of this past week, as I know there is more to come soon.
The doctor had us reduce Mags' Clonazepam to once a day. Initially, she seemed a bit more alert and even definitively looked at me and flashed a purposeful smile at me. That was last Friday-warmed my heart. And then....she started throwing up. It was just consistently early evenings. At first I chalked it up to feeding. All babies spit up, right? Caught a bug maybe? If that was the case, it would have been continuous. I thought maybe an allergic reaction to something I was eating, so many possibilities. When I noticed this trend and I got ahold of the neurologist's office. They said she was probably having withdrawal from the med and they told us to take her off it completely. That wasn't even something Shawn and I came up with. It was then that I realized that God has protected me and allows me to not realize some information until I can handle it, like my 4 month old daughter could become addicted to the drugs.
So...Monday evening was the last she had any Clonazepam. Since then, she did not throw up Wednesday (though we had therapy and they did identify a lot of emotional stress going on. I'm sure they helped balance her systems a bit).
The rest of the week, we have created a lot of laundry. Friday evening she seemed to decline a little more, throwing up more consistently. The on-call neurologist suggested giving her the Clonazepam again to "stop the vomiting". We considered, but she actually zonked that evening pretty well and we thought she might be doing better. And in my mind going on and off meds that she could be having withdrawals from just to stop the vomiting didn't quite make sense to me. Now if they said to put her back on to get her by until we can get an EEG, then maybe I'd buy it. At any rate, we didn't give it to her. Saturday morning, we found out we were wrong and she was still not doing so well. At this point we became more concerned with dehydration. I spoke with the on-call nurse coordinated with our doctor's office. She recommended that she be seen by someone medical, so we went in to the local hospital to get checked out. The bloodwork showed she was hydrated, electrolytes looked good, so we thought she was stable enough to make it through the weekend till we could get with the neurologist for an EEG. And Saturday evening it appeared she was moving up. Sunday morning not too bad either. And then she threw up at church. And she started some weird eye movement stuff. Three suspected seizures in one hour, not feeding well, and throwing up=time to head back to Vanderbilt.
We had been praying for discernment to know when to head back, and it was pretty clear to both of us. I started the trek by myself only to figure out I would be paying too much attention to the gagging child in my review mirror. At the same time, our dear friend insisted that we don't go alone. So Pam caught up with me and chauffeured us to Vandy.
The minute we pulled in, she really started to decline. After waiting for a while behind a 10 year old with a headache, the nurse started to ask questions and assess her, only to take her from my arms and rush her to triage.
So far she has been decently stable and I have been asked lots of questions over and over and over again. She's finally in her helmet and I may get to lay down for a bit. We'll keep updating...