Just when you thought you might finally have something go normally without complications, of course that’s the time that you get the news of complications.
He was irritable yesterday evening (if I had just gotten shoved out of a small birth canal into a bright and cold world, I’d be a bit irritable as well. Unfortunately, Mommy noticed that it had progressed from irritable and prickly (which you’d expect after the day he had!) into actual seizures.
Those aren’t normal, guys!
It took a fair amount of pushing by Mommy to finally get them to realize that she knew what she was seeing (you’d think she’d get a pass on that as she works pediatrics ED at the WakeMed facility and probably sees enough of this!). But thanks to her being persistent and keeping her cool under very trying and emotional circumstances, Alexander followed his older brother over to the redesigned NICU unit for more intense scrutiny to discern the cause. Several labs were drawn to check for infection but those were very quickly ruled out. They wired a bunch of leads to his head (it almost looked like something from an old B-grade science fiction movie when the mad scientist hooks up the poor victim to a really bad machine to suck out their brains or something). These leads were for the EEG which did confirm the seizures (some of which were pretty obvious to the eye when you knew what to look for and how it would manifest).
Next up is an MRI to see if they can pinpoint what’s going on and that’s likely going tomorrow (it seems to be localized on the right side of the brain). In the mean time, he’s responded well to phenobarbital or phenobarb for short. This is billed as a wonder drug, particularly for very young babies and it certainly has helped cut down on the seizures as well as whacked him out for a while!
Until then, we can only hope for the best and be prepared for what news comes our way.
Gram made a trip up from Fayetteville to get an Alexander fix this evening…I think it’s safe to say that she’s on the he’s awfully cute bandwagon!).
BTW, a big shout-out to our new friends over at A4 where Daddy works who were kind enough to send an awfully beautiful flower arrangement which arrived at precisely the right time (read: when we were getting the initial reports and wondering just how this was going to go with Alexander). What a beautiful and thoughtful gift and it was very much appreciated.