Thursday, September 29, 2011

EEG


Papa and Vince "driving" a tractor
Vince loves to drive, he helps mow the lawn and would love to do it everyday if he could
The day after his seizure. He was having fun taking things out of his diaper bag and eating cheese chips off of the floor. :)
I forgot to put up pictures from when we met the Gibbs family. Here is a picture of Greyson and Vince. You can see how excited they were to meet each other. :)

Tuesday we had an EEG to check Vince's brain activity and it did show that his left frontal lobe has some abnormal activity. This is a good thing and a bad thing. It is good because we know that his seizure was not cause by anything new. A little history on Vince: three weeks after he was born he had a shunt put in and after surgery he had bleeding in his brain which led to a seizure then. After that seizure we were put on phenobarbital but he has been off of that for over a year now. The blood has gone away in his brain, but there are still stains from it and my understanding is that the stains will be there for a very long time if not forever. The stain somehow was activated again and caused the seizure. Kids brains grow a lot in the first three years of life and that is probably what happened with Vince (a growth spurt). The bad is that he now has to be on seizure medicine for at least two years. If he is seizure free in that time then we will be able to think about it. The doctor is hopeful that he will out grow this and we wont have to deal with it in the future. Other than that Vince is doing great, he is cruising furniture and talking a lot!

Love,
Nick, Andrea, and Vince

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Not quite what we expected for the first day of School


So our school year started of a little differently than we planned. Monday night Nick and I were getting lunches ready at about 10pm because school started on Tuesday. I heard Vince on the monitor and it sounded like he was getting restless so I went up to check on him. When I went into his room I saw that he was having a seizure and I called for Nick quickly. We called 911 and soon they arrived. His seizure lasted about 7 minutes and he was out of it for a little while. He finally really responded to the paramedics when they put the oxygen on him and started to cry. They were very happy he was crying and we were too. They transported us to Bronson hospital and we hung out in the Emergency Room until about 2:30 in the morning. They did a lot of blood work and found that he did not have an infection that caused it nor did he have a fever or anything else that would have caused it. The reason they believe he had it, and his neurologist told us it could happen, is because he still has blood stains in his brain from when he was 3 weeks old and had bleeding in his brain after shunt surgery. We were told that the blood went away a long time ago, but the blood stains will be there for a long time if not forever. Blood is an irritant and can cause seizures. Sometimes a growth spurt can cause it to act up and I am sure there are more things that can as well. At the ER they decided to put him in a new anti-seizure medication, Keppra, and we will be continuing that. He seems to be doing well with it, he has been a little bit wobbly, but tonight he was even doing much better walking. It says on the medication that it can make them dizzy, so that might be what is going on, or he is still worn out from the whole ordeal. We are going in to see the neurologist on Sept. 27th and will be having and EEG first that day. I think we will have a better idea of what the long term plan is at that point. I hope at some point we are able to get off of the anti-seizure medicine, but right now we are just hoping to be seizure free for a while. All three of us stayed home on Tuesday and I missed the first day of school, but my students did so well. I think I lucked out this semester with some great students.

On a positive note, we got Vince a Cars potty a little while ago and he has been going potty on it at night before we get into the bath tub. We still don't know how much feeling he has in that area, but he is able to push some poop out. :) Tonight he actually asked to go potty on the toilet before we had gone up stairs, so he really seems to like it.

We will keep you all posted on how things are going, but for now everything has settled down and we are all doing well.

Love,
Nick, Andrea, and Vince

Monday, September 5, 2011

Pictures from our walk








We decided to take a walk yesterday because the weather was very nice and there were very few bugs. We also wanted to scope out some good spots to take pictures around the lake in our neighborhood. I think they turned out pretty nice. I am excited for when all of the leaves turn colors, I think our fall pictures will turn out very good. It is very cold here today, only 54, compared to 93 on Friday, but we have had a great weekend just staying at home and relaxing. I think we are ready for school to start tomorrow. Hopefully you are all having a wonderful Labor Day!

Love,
Nick, Andrea, and Vince

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Stroll N Roll



We have decided to participate in a Stroll N Roll sporting Spina Bifida this fall! It is on October 15th and is in Grand Rapids. Here is the website that explains exactly what we will be doing: http://wmspinabifida.org/strollnroll/Home.html

Our team name is D Hats because Vince loves the Tigers and every day when Nick walks in the door that is the first thing Vince tells Nick to do "D hat on."

If any of you would like to support our team you can go here: https://www.wepay.com/donate/93602
to donate money.

Thank you in advance for all of your support!

Love,
Nick, Andrea, and Vince