Audrey and Nathan Clements

So January 13th, Nate and I took Hannah and Rachel to Utah. Hailey had went to school like normal and was picked up my Edmund's mom Jamie who was also watching Robert for the day.  We ended up picking them up pretty late (around 9) and the kids were bummed since they wanted a sleep over.

Since my mom was still in Utah we picked her up so she could go to the appointment with us. We saw Dr. Barkan which was little stressful since it's tough to update what was been going to since our last appointment in May. We should have meet in Aug/September but there was hardly any seizure activity so we didn't schedule an appointment.  She said it reflected poorly on her for us to not follow her directions which makes since. Also we've been giving Hannah calcium which the specialist said didn't have a connection with seizures. However, her blood level says she's low on calcium. But overall it was a good appointment and besides the full up EEG that we did that day, we are to have three appointments in the future. First, we are going to see Paula Peterson during spring break to talk about a diet change either a modified Atkins diet or ketogenic diet. We also talked about how Hannah is delayed in speech and the Dr. was even wondering if she was delayed in other development abilities. She's not as stable on her feet as a normal 2 year old would be.  We are going through the Infant and Toddler Program in pocatello to work on these areas. According to their tests, Hannah is pretty normal in all aspects except speech. She tested low on her emotional/social well being but that was in connection to not being able to vocalize her needs and wants.  So there will be a speech therapist coming to our home every other week to teach Nathan and I how to encourage her to talk more.  The third appointment is with Genetics. The earliest they can get us in is the middle of July.  I'm very interested in how that appointment will be like and what information they will be able to get.

As I'm calling around to make sure these appointments get scheduled, one of the nurses said that Dr. Barkan wants Hannah to have a second opinion on her epilepsy and will have that done on the same day during Spring Break.  The concern came from her third EEG result. During the testing they want some testing while she's awake and then some while she's asleep. We couldn't get her to sleep even though she was very tired. She hated the wires attached to her head and kept pulling at them. At the end of the testing they flashed her with strobe lights. Nothing had an affect on her. She had normal brain activity which is completely different from her second EEG which Dr. Barkan called it World War III. However, with that one her body was convulsing and she went into a seizure within an hour or two of the test.  We talked about doing an over night EEG study but haven't done anything for set that up yet.

Ever appointment we have about Hannah, I learn new things. We showed her a video of Hannah in a seizure and the doctor asked if Hannah's eyes always goes to the right. That's not something I noticed but will try to pay attention to next time.