Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty at age 3 and 1/2

Today was a day of swimming, dinner with family, and watching fireworks. It was also a day that Sonja suffered another seizure. Lately, she has been having them more frequently, up to 1 or 2 per month. Her seizures are called gran mal and last at least 3 minutes, but sometimes longer. Its the longer ones that we worry the most about. If the seizure doesn't subside within 3 minutes, we pull out her emergency meds and knock it out with that. This keeps us from having to call 911 and have her transported to the ER. Still, if the emergency meds don't work, we will still call the paramedics for support. We've got the routine down pat and never hesistate calling if we need to. The EMTs are very nice.

So this morning, upon entering her room and seeing her in a seizure, the meds are usually given since we don't know when the seizure started. She could've been seizing for 1 minute or 1 hour, that's the hard part about finding her this way. We are always checking on her and have a baby monitor in her room, but outside of sleeping right next to her every night, there are going to be times we miss when she is having them.

When Sonja gets her meds, it takes about 3 minutes to kick in, then she is off to sleep, usually for half a day. The next few days she is tired and doesn't eat well, due to the heavy meds and the prolonged seizure. Sonja is a trooper though and she always bounces back.