Upstairs again

J was moved out of the ICU and back up to the regular hospital ward last night. Her overall condition is back to what it was before the seizure.

We are going to ask her doctor if it would be possible to release her for a short time so she can have Christmas with us outside the hospital.

Merry Holiday.s.

Christmas in space

Workers unite!

J Update

So J is still groggy, though they had given her Ativan this morning so it was hard to gauge whether it was seizure related. After talking with her yesterday I found that she has no memory of the event but that is expected. Otherwise she appears to be winding back toward normalcy (of a kind). Hopefully she will be more alert this evening.

Info: Grand mal seizure

What causes seizures?

In general, seizures may be caused by many conditions, diseases, injuries, and other factors. These may include conditions such as the following abnormalities in the blood vessels of the brain, atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries supplying the brain, bleeding into the brain, such as a subarachnoid hemorrhage , brain tumors, chromosomal abnormalities, congenital diseases or conditions, high blood pressure, pregnancy and problems associated with pregnancy, stroke, transient ischemic attack, which is also called a mini-stroke.

Diseases also can be a factor in seizures, they include advanced liver disease, Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia, epilepsy, or a disease of the nervous system, hereditary diseases, infections involving the brain, including encephalitis, brain abscess, and bacterial meningitis, kidney failure, such as chronic renal failure.

Injuries that may cause seizures include choking, head injury such as a motor vehicle accident or sports injury, electrical injuries, injury during birth or in the uterus, poisonous insect bites or stings.

Additional factors that may cause seizures include alcohol withdrawal, craniotomy, which is brain surgery, high fever, especially in young children, illegal drugs such as cocaine, lead poisoning, overheating, withdrawal from some medicines, including those used to treat seizures.

J has hypertension, renal failure and was low in her Dilantin count after the seizure. Paired with a low blood sugar count this seems like a likely cause for her seizure. Her doctor thinks that since the edema has reduced in her intestines, she is actually absorbing more and her metabolism has increased. This could have led to her drug and sugar levels dropping faster than normal, leading to a 'crash' at which point she had her seizure.

Latest news...

I just talked to J's doctor, and J is back to where she was before this event. Apparently she is talking and acting normal again, though she is now nauseous and in pain again. He thinks there were many factors that contributed to her seizure, low blood sugar, low Dilantin levels, fatigue...

...I'll post more later, but good news so far.

Seizure Update

J is unfortunately still pretty unresponsive. It is impossible for her to stay awake for more than a few words, so they are giving her a cat scan this afternoon. Their first thought was that she suffered a stroke, but she is aware of her environment, correctly answers questions, and has full control of her body so this doesn't appear to be the case. They've had to restrain her because she has pulled out her PICC line twice.

She still had a constant dose of Fentanyl before and after the seizure, so they are leaning away from withdrawal as the candidate.

I was able to make her smile and giggle a bit talking about our cat which at least made me feel a bit better. I'll post again when I learn more.

Seizure

J had a a grand mal seizure this morning and was moved to the ICU. At the time I got to the ICU her blood sugar was rising from a low of 23. I am going to try and re-construct exactly what happened tomorrow when I can talk to the attending physician, I was only able to speak with him briefly today.

J's is stabilizing, her blood pressure dropped to the 70's/40's which was probably an endocrine reaction. They have raised it back to a more normal level nearer to the low 100's/60's.

She is unresponsive which I expected. Hopefully she will be awake tomorrow.