Category Archives: health

As we expected, Michael’s MRI showed perfectly normal inside-of-a-toddler’s-head stuff. Just brains and such, no evil masses or other bizarre growth.

Thank God for that news!

So from here on we’ll just treat this with the medicine and pray for the best.

Michael had his MRI today.

He was such a good sport about it.

My wife and I got up early so we could have our breakfast and get daughter S ready before he woke up, so we wouldn’t be eating anything in front of him. Doctors orders were to be sure he has no food after 3:15 AM, and no liquids after 7:45 AM.

So, when we got him up at 7:15, we immediately sat him down to watch “Simba” and drink as much juice as we could get in to him for the next half hour. Of course, he wasn’t at all interested in drinking at that point.

At 7:45 we got ourselves booted and spurred and out the door. That’s when he started wanting his sippy cup of juice. “Sorry kiddo, no more juice now. We’ll have some after we visit the doctor.”

We took him to a park to run off a little steam, and he insisted that we allow him to engage in his favorite park climbing structure activity: swinging on the swingset.

Then it was off to the hospital.

We got there a smidge early for check in. While my wife was checking him in and signing the papers and all that, we stayed in the waiting room and looked at the aquarium. It was stocked with what I believe to be salt water fish, though the filter system didn’t look as complex as I’ve always thought salt water aquariums require. Michael was very happy to see two clownfish in there, one large and one small. Naturally, he labeled the large one “Marlin” and the small one “Nemo,” after his until-recently-favorite movie. There was a little blue fish in there too, and that one became “Dory.”

Soon it was time to get prepared for the MRI. He had to doff his clothes in favor of hospital jammies. He was not at all happy to do this. He wanted to keep his sweatshirt on, thank you very much (I will delve into this peculiarity at a future date). So the nurse conversed with us, explaining that once he’s conked out, they’ll just change it then. We exchanged knowing winks. Fortunately, we can still get away with talking over his head.

Then came the wrist bracelet. One for mommy, and one for Michael.

“I no like this one!” he said, and immediately began pulling it off. I took him aside.

“Michael, you need to have this on so you don’t get lost,” I reasoned.

“I go tell mama.” he said. He does this because he figures A) Daddy is not the boss of him, and B) Mama will always say yes if he’s sufficiently cute or pleading.

“Mama, I no like this!” So the nurse, sensing a rise in tension, tells my wife we can cut his bracelet off if it’s going to be a big deal. My wife quickly does so and Michael is once again satisfied. I felt like he would probably turn around and say “Neener neener neener” to me, but fortunately he hasn’t reached that level of sophistication yet.

And we waited, and waited, and waited. Meanwhile, he became more and more cranky as the minutes passed.

“Come on, Daddy. I want go see the water.” He tugged on my hand to drag me out the door so we could go back to the part of the hospital we crossed through earlier in order to see this fountain that he liked.

“No, Michael, we have to stay here. The doctor is going to come soon!”

“No want to! Want to see the water! Want to look down the drain!” (I will delve into that peculiarity later as well)

“Michael, let’s read a book! Look, here’s Bert and Ernie!” His mom offered, but he’d have none of that. I could tell he was having a serious blood sugar droop. He was getting more and more cranky and tearful.

“No!” He shouted, and stamped his foot. My wife scooped him up and sat with him.

“Do you want to color?”

“No!” he cried.

“Do you want a story?”

“No!” he cried.

“Do you want to snuggle with mama?”

He nodded. So they sat and snuggled, and he tried to get comfy, but he couldn’t and he cried. Poor little guy.

Soon the anesthesiologist came to talk with us, and he brightened up a bit, thinking he was getting close to being set free. We chatted about his reactions to anesthesia, and how he usually comes out of it really cranky.

“Crankier than this,” I added, as he sunk back down into his sugar-deprived toddler rage.

The doctor assured us that this time would be different, since he wasn’t going through a surgical procedure and won’t be getting any pain medication, only sleepy drugs.

“Okay, Michael, want to come with me?” She asked, and led him by the hand out the door and into the pre-op room to get his sleepy gas administered. He went without a complaint. My wife and I watched as he toddled along, jammie bottoms and favorite sweatshirt on top, blankie and glow worm in one hand and the other holding the anesthesiologist’s.

Since we had 40 minutes to kill, my wife and I headed upstairs to the cafeteria for coffee and a relaxing chat.

After what seemed like only ten minutes but was indeed a full 40 minutes, we headed back downstairs to find that Michael was already waking up.

“He’s awake already, and we were looking for you,” the nurse said. She led us into the room where he was, and I took him from the doctor, and sat down with him. She gave Michael a little cup of apple juice with a straw. I’m sure to him it was sweet nectar of life.

“He was so good!” The doctor said. “He went under giggling and playing, and woke up the same way.”

“That’s great,” we both said, happy and surprised.

“The funny thing was,” the doctor continued, smiling, “he asked me ‘Can I do it again?’”

He never ceases to amaze me. What a little champ this guy is.

My wife and I took Michael to the neurologist last Friday, and we were given a diagnosis and a prescription.

Michael evidently is dealing with “Myoclonic Seizures” which is sort of what we had thought anyway. The doc said it’s a form of epilepsy. I suppose “Epilepsy” is one of those continuum sorts of conditions, since it contains this very benign and almost ignorable form as well as the infamous Grand Mal seizure with which epilepsy is so commonly associated. This form doesn’t appear to have a particular cause or focus, nor is it understood why it begins.

However, he went on to say that if we are able to control it with medication, that is, if we don’t see any seizures for the next couple of years, he’ll very likely grow out of it. So the medication won’t be a life-long necessity. That is good news in my estimation.

The doc sent us home with a sample of Depakote and a prescription for the same.

So far, Michael’s been taking it every morning and so far, we haven’t seen any more seizures.

Of course we’ve been reading various online articles and such describing horror stories of epilepsy medication side effects, and naturally we’re on constant vigil looking for any and all signs and indications of some worse condition.

I’ll wait until he’s finished all of his Easter chocolate before I start really noting any signs in earnest.

Last night we got the word from the pediatrician that Michael’s EEG shows “definite seizure activity.” My wife told me this while I’m standing in the kitchen cooking spaghetti. She held back tears.

Since she had been a pediatric nurse for years, her experience with children having seizures always meant tumors and epilepsy and serious brain problems. So naturally she’s scared.

The nurse who reported this to her read as much of the report as made sense, and then some, since my wife understands all the technical jargon.

I cannot replicate exactly what the report said in this medical language, but what we understand it to mean is this: “There is something going on, but we really don’t know why.”

So the doctor has ordered an MRI, for which we will take Michael in next Wednesday. Tomorrow is our initial visit with the neurologist to go over things with him, and bring him up to speed on Michael’s medical history, and have him answer our questions.

I wish we knew more. I wish we had some answers. I wish we had more to go on at this point, but we just don’t.

Michael seems fine. He’s happy, most of the time, and doing the things he’s always done. Well, except that now his favorite movie is “The Lion King” and no longer “Finding Nemo”. One of his sisters forced this upon him just the other day and he’s taken to it. So now we’re going to have to suffer through countless rehashings of “Simba” for the next few weeks.

What we’d like to hear is some definitive “This is what he has, and this is how we treat it,” kind of thing.

Hanging in limbo like this is one of those things that human beings just don’t handle very well.

Michael had his EEG, and was a very good boy during the whole procedure.

Once we got in, he sat in my lap while the technician hooked up the leads to his head. Fortunately these leads stick to the hair and so he didn’t need a whole head shave – that would have been really bizarre.

It took half an hour to hook up thirty leads, plus one over his heart. But held real still, and didn’t try to grab for the little sticky things on his head too much. Just the same, I held his hands down.

Fortunately the exam room had a DVD player and a copy of “The Incredibles”, which he watched with near rapt attention. At home, his favorite movie is “Finding Nemo”, and when asked if he’d like to watch “The Incredibles” will tell you “No like that one.” So go figure, he liked it that day.

Anyway, once everything was hooked up, we spend another half hour sitting there while the machine recorded squiggles indicating that Michael’s brain was active. I have never doubted this, but now we have indisputable proof.

All the while, when Michael would laugh, or turn, or grab something, or do anything other than just sit there staring, the technician would record his activity on the log to indicate what he was doing at the time of any particular set of squiggles.

And then, at about 11 minutes into the recording, he had not one but two myclonic jerk episodes.

“He just did it. And, again,” I said to the technician, indicating to her that it would be a good idea to note that.

“He did? Just now?” Yep. That’s what I’m saying. “Oh, great. Let me jot that down…” she quickly typed in a note to the EEG log, mumbling to herself. “The Doctor will want to know this when he reads over the EEG,” She said. My wife and I looked at each other. “Ya think?” was the knowing glance we exchanged. We both agreed later that we weren’t sure whether the technician was really all there that morning.

Finally, the test was done and we were released. The technician reminded us that we probably wouldn’t hear back about results for a week or so.

Michael had been such a good boy during the test that we decided to take him to McDonald’s to have chicken nuggets and to play in the tubes.

My wife and I watched him climb through the playstructure with what I believe to be nearly the entire contingent of offspring of the greater Portland metropolitan area, and we chatted about Michael’s condition, and how we should probably be more careful in keeping him safe from injuries that might make things worse, at least until we know what exactly is going on.

Then we heard a familiar cry, and my wife rushed over to the play structure where Michael stood, bawling.

He’d slipped and bonked his noggin against a step, and got a nice little goose egg above his left eye.

Well, we’re off to a great start keeping his head protected.

Michael’s had tubes in his ears for some time now, or did anyway – the doctor pulled them out yesterday. Not because the job was done and they weren’t needed, but because Michael’s eardrums decided to shove them out and heal up. The tympanic membrane does that.

So naturally Michael developed an ear infection.

But what brought him to the doctor wasn’t that, it is instead a recently-begun behavior that Michael’s been exhibiting that has his mom and me worried. Four weeks ago, he wasn’t doing this. Now he is.

It’s a “myoclonic jerk”, or involuntary jump which mimics the infantile startle reflex. He’ll be sitting there doing nothing and suddenly throw his arms out and twitch like he’d just heard a sudden loud noise. It can happen any time, whether he’s sitting or standing or lying down, whether he’s watching TV or reading a book or playing with a toy or walking around, whether he’s just eaten or hasn’t yet, whether he’s just gotten up or has been up for a while.

Just every so often, he does that jumpy twitch thing.

He’ll usually toss whatever he has in his hands, if anything. He’s dropped his juice and his fork on occasion, and recently at McDonald’s he dropped a little bottle of chocolate milk he’d been sipping, spilling it all over and necessitating a call to the on-staff hazmat team. They really spend a good long time working over that spill, too. Gotta give them credit.

We tried to catch it with our digital video camera, and he usually thwarted our best efforts. We took hours of video of him sitting at the table over the course of a week, with no luck. Every time we turned the camera on him, it seemed, his symptoms would vanish.

Finally we got the twitch on video this last weekend, after fifteen minutes of recording. My wife came running out to find me in the garage working on some project or other, and said “We got it! It’s a good one,” she said, pleased.

We did this so we could show it to the doctor. My wife emailed the video image to the doctor, and he called back an hour later saying he’d like to run some tests on Michael to see what might be causing the problem.

So this Thursday, we’ll be taking Michael to the hospital for some brain scans and an EEG.

Lord, I do hope it is nothing serious. Like maybe it’s just some weird neurological development stage that he’ll grow out of. Or maybe it’s due to an alergy. It seems like there are a gazillion different bizarre symptoms caused by allergies, why not this one?

Anyway… for those of you out there reading, please say a prayer for him.