The Journey We Are On.....

Ethan's continuing to fight the "bug" that has been plaguing him for more than a week now. The cough isn't going away, and I'll be calling the doctor tomorrow. Yesterday, I had to use Ethan's rescue medication in the first time since May. While the seizures have returned over the last couple of weeks, we weren't seeing them every day and they hadn't started to cluster until yesterday afternoon. I am thankful that the diastat stopped them, but I hate that I had to use it. The diastat really kicked his butt yesterday and he slept for more than 4 hours. It finally got late enough that we had to wake him, which was hard because he was so groggy, but eventually he woke up. Although we were concerned that Ethan might be up all night, he wasn't and slept really well until around 5:30am, which isn't bad considering that since the time change he has been consistently waking up between 5:00 and 5:30am. Ethan and I stayed home from church this morning...

Ethan's been back on the full dose of Topamax for more than a week. Unfortunately, the seizures are still breaking through. I called the Epileptologist's office on Friday, and he instructed us to increase the Charlotte's Web from 9 drops twice a day to 12 drops twice a day for a week to see if that would help. If they are still breaking through we are then to increase the Charlotte's Web to 15 drops twice a day. Friday evening we began the increased dose. So, we'll know wait and see what happens. Friday we witnessed 4 seizures, Saturday we saw 2, and Sunday we have seen 2. Thankfully, they are all relatively short, just 5 to 10 seconds each, and so far they have not clustered, but it's still awful. I hate seizures. "Big sister" saw one Sunday, while we were all at the table for lunch, and was surprisingly calm about it. Sometimes it is hard to believe that she has only been in our home since June. She has become a tiny little advocate and ambassado...

Last Thursday we made the trek to Iowa City to see Ethan's epileptologist. We are very thankful that Dr. Ciliberto is part of Ethan's team. Not only is he a wonderful doctor who seems to truly love working with kids, his undergraduate degree is from the University of Illinois, Jeff's alma mater. Dr. Ciliberto was excited to see how well Ethan is doing and how alert he is no that he is no longer on phenobarbital. In terms of seizure control it has been a really good summer and fall for Ethan, since we added Charlotte's Web hemp oil to his regimen, got off of Banzel, and got off of phenobarbital. It is like our little boy woke up again. Which of course makes sense since some of most common side effects of phenobarbital are: sleepiness or fatigue, depression, dizziness, upset stomach, memory problems, and trouble paying attention. Since Ethan has been doing so wonderful, we talked with Dr. Ciliberto about the possibility of weaning Ethan off of Topamax as well to s...