No news is good news

No news is good news here. While Wyatt still has the remains of this lingering cold, it doesn’t really seem to bother him much aside from being a bit more sleepy. Everyone else in this family thankfully has finally kicked this bug to the curb.

One thing that is worth mentioning though, especially to the families out there using Keppra, is that we (once again) decided to stop using it. We left the hospital with full intentions to follow through on the twice a day 2.5mL dose at least until we do another EEG in about 6 months. After all, we had no way of knowing whether the Keppra was what actually stopped those silent seizures or whether getting over the trach infection itself was what made that EEG activity stop. From the time we were discharged on September 3^rd until that following Sunday September 8^th we were giving him his dose almost on the dot at 8am and 8pm. We did noticed that Wyatt was really irritable and just not his happy usual self but brushed it off to being the effects of the cold. In retrospect, we should have picked up on it right then that something different was going on because he has never acted that cranky with any of the colds he had previously. Then on that Sunday he was actually so cranky that he threw several back to back breath holding/passing out/blue spell episodes that we ended up having to give him Ativan to make him stop and go to sleep. That was a major red flag because we have not gone to that extreme in over 6 months. Still, we didn’t realize what was causing him to be so cranky until the following day. On Monday September 9th I was so busy with all four kids that I didn’t realize until after bedtime that night that I had totally forgotten to give him any Keppra that day. Ironically, he was happy as can be all day. That’s when the light bulb effect happened and I was curious. He still had the cold so that variable couldn’t be considered as the cause of his crankiness anymore. The only thing that had changed was that he no longer had Keppra in his system. Damn, we should have known and went with our gut feeling in the first place when the suggestion was made to try him on this medication again. This was exactly what happened when we first tried Keppra with him over a year ago. He doesn’t tolerate having any loss of control when he’s drowsy. That’s one of the side effects of this medication and that’s what makes him have increased breath holding episodes. Just to be sure, we went without the medication the next day and the same thing happened. We had our happy go lucky 2 year old kid back who was unstoppable running around all over the place. So once again, we had to conclude that while the intention of medication to reduce his breath holding and therefore seizures was good, it ultimately contributed to more episodes and therefore an increased risk of seizures and we have to say no.