At 12am on Tueday, I woke up to noises from Hayden's room. I went to check on him and noticed (smelled) that he was in serious need of a diaper change. I put him down on the bed that was in there to change it. After I was done, he began to get fussy and made some odd arm movements, with both arms, that seemed to agitate him and that he did not appear to be in control of. An hour later, I was really concerned since he continued the movements and at no time had tried to go back to sleep. This was very unlike him. I ran downstairs and grabbed the camera. I was able to record some of these episodes. I wanted to be able to send them to his neurologist so she could take a look at them and hopefully tell me that the movements were seizures. Unfortunately, the videos took up too much space and I couldn't email them to her no matter what I tried. These concerning movements continued until 3:30am when he finally fell asleep. I decided to begin my work day for an hour before I got ready to leave for the office. I knew I should get some time in since I would probably be leaving early. I called the neurologists office in the morning and she told me to get to Mercy as soon as I could for an EEG. Depending on how it goes, she may decide to admit Hayden to do an 24 hour video EEG.
I left work at 8:30am and arrived at the hospital at 9:30am for the EEG. While we were waiting in the waiting room, Hayden heard Kristi, one of the EEG tech talking in the hallway and got a huge grin on his face. If he is recognizing her voice, we've had a few too many EEGs. It took 30-45 minutes to get him all hooked up to the electrodes. He was very good and didn't even cry this time. It's hard to know if he's going to cry or not when they put the electodes on his head. Since it was likely that this was going to be a 24 hour test, Kristi, the EEG tech had to get out the compressor and get those things really stuck to his head. Boy, is the residue hard to get out of his head. Nail polish remover is all that I've found to get the goo off of his precious head. This time, his head was shaved due to the previous week's shunt revision, so his head should be easier to clean this time.
Word got out that Hayden was there, so all of his EEG ladies came in to see him. Since we've seen them every week for over a month, we've gotten to know eachother and the 3 of them love Hayden so much that they fight about who gets to do his EEG that week. He's quite the ladies man already! About an hour into the EEG, Hayden's neurologist, Dr. Palat, came in and said that his EEG still looked good, so if he had had any seizures, his EEG hasn't changed--WHEW! Since he hadn't duplicated the movements from earlier in the morning, she decided to admit Hayden to see if he did repeat those movements while hooked up to the EEG.
While waiting for insurance approval for admission, I realized how hungry I was. I hadn't had a chance to eat that day, I was too concerned for Hayden and about getting as much of my work done as I could while I was in the office that morning. I always keep a couple of cereal bars in the diaper bag with a bottle of water since I never know how long we will be waiting in the doctor's office or the hospital. Unfortunatley, they didn't touch my hunger, but a room should be ready soon and once Hayden was all settled in, I could sneak away for some food and caffine. A couple of hours later (about 3pm), we were finally heading to a room!
Kristi and Amanda met us down there with the video EEG equipment and...Starbucks for Mommy! Amanda knew I hadn't eaten all day and knows I love carmel macchiatos. (Told you were were getting to know the EEG tech really well) So, she got one of those for me with a wonderful blueberry dessert. It was all divine and greatly appreciated. Amanda also lives in Ankeny on the other side of town and has a son who is also a pointer and grunter. We need to get him and Nick together so we can watch them point and grunt at everthing. That would be quite entertaining.
The resident, Dr. Tacke, came in and took his history. Soon after I laid Hayden in the crib (the hospital got nice new ones), he vomited. Something is really not right if he is doing this in the hospital, he has never done that while in the hospital. She was also concerned with his vomiting and since we were already at the hospital, we might as well check that out too. Maybe we'll get some answers...
I am not even going to pretend I have a clue how to read an EEG, but I could tell that it was reamining nice and boring like earlier in the day...yay! Dr. Palat came in later and confirmed the same and said she would be back tomorrow to check on us. My mom came up to hang out with us so I could eat, shower, and get some work done. Hayden was a happy camper hanging out in his crib kicking away and babbling. A few giggles even worked themselves out. Leave it up to Hayden to always be the happiest kid in the hospital. No wonder the nurses love to take care of him. By the way, we may have run out of nurses we haven't had yet. I guess we'll see...
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