Weight Check

It’s been a very busy week for James. Mommy and daddy, too. On Tuesday he went to the GI for a weight check in. He weighed in at 33 pounds and is 35 inches long. The doc said that James is at the higher end of normal weight for someone his age and height so she wants us to decrease his feeds from 240 ml to 200 ml to see if we can get him to lose a little bit of weight or at least maintain his current weight. Honestly, Stacy and I wouldn’t mind if he lost a little bit. Our backs are a little bit sore from continually lifting him, and it’s only going to get worse as he gets bigger.

MEG Scan

On Wednesday James had a MEG scan of his brain. Unfortunately, James’ seizures did not cooperate. He had a seizure when we first got to the hospital around 9:30 am. He went back to get prepped to go into the MEG scanner at 10 am and was put into it at 11 am. He was in the scanner for about 2 hours. He was very chatty for a while, then took a nap, woke up and chatted some more, and then took another nap.

The tech had to turn the machine off at 1:15 because she had another patient scheduled at 2 pm. He did not have any visible seizures while he was in there, but as the tech was pulling him out, bam, a seizure. Are you freaking kidding me?! Stacy counted 4 seizures in the 2 hours after the MEG scan. So, James had seizure before and after he was in the MEG scanner, but not during, so we’re not sure if they were able to capture any seizure activity. The whole point of doing the scan was to capture the part of the brain that the seizures were coming from. If the seizures are localized to one area, he might be able to be a candidate for surgery.

I have to say that James was such a trooper. He spent a couple of hours stuck in a room with a door like a bank vault laying on the MEG scanner. I’m not sure if I would like that. Stacy is claustrophobic so I know she definitely wouldn’t like it.

Here is a very informative video from the Nebraska Medical Center about epilepsy treatments. There is a section about the MEG scanner that starts at 1:54.

MRI

Thursday was another brain testing day, this time with an MRI. The MRI was scheduled for 9 am, but they asked us to be there at 7:30. We showed up on time, but he didn’t go into the MRI until 10:45 am. Because James had to be still while in the MRI, they had to put him under anesthesia. He was a bit chatty after the MRI and the anesthesia started wearing off.

The neurologist said that it will take about three weeks for him to review and compare the results from the VEEG James had a few weeks ago, the MEG scan, and the MRI. Please say some prayers and keep your fingers crossed that something good comes out of all of this testing.