I have always loved the color purple, but now it means even more to me because I love a child with epilepsy. November is epilepsy awareness month and the color for the ribbon is purple. I decided to dedicate today’s short post with just a few epilepsy facts for everyone:
- What causes Deeds epilepsy? For our little guy the doctors believe it is caused by the PVL brain damage he has, but for more than half of the people living with epilepsy they don’t know the cause.
- What is a seizure? A seizure is a burst of electrical activity in the brain that can trigger anything from a sensation of a twitching finger to a full Tonic-clonic seizure where a person will drop to the floor and convulse. Deeds has a couple of types of seizures. Seizures can last from a few seconds to multiple minutes.
- Epilepsy affects more than 300,000 children in the United States under the age of 15 years old.
Many children do outgrow forms of childhood epilepsy but since Deeds is associated with his PVL we aren’t sure yet if he will. Our goal is to try to make it 2 years with no seizures. So far they are actually increasing so we are trying to adjust medications to find the right balance. Our neurologist is fantastic and believes in starting the medication low and slowly increasing if possible to avoid over dosing him and having his brain function be impaired and learning affected.
November 20th, 2011 at 6:59 PM
300,000 children? That number is nearly incomprehensible! So sad. I hope the medication is balanced soon.