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.