Looking for Answers

Well, we have been home from the hospital for more than a week. At first we felt like maybe something would happen right away with the medicine, even though they said the dose she was on was very weak (Zonegran 12mg, 2x a day). But, we couldn't help but feel hopeful after the relatively optimistic diagnosis by our doc. He said and I quote, "This is my favorite result". By that he meant that of all the bad news, finding the problem was a small spot in Marleigh's brain was the best of all the possible bad causes. The only other potentially good outcome would have been to find no cause for the seizures, because often the undiagnosable seizures resolve themselves with no later complications. The other good news is that the surgery would happen at UCLA and our Dr. would be the one to do it.

I'm not one to sit still, especially when I'm watching my little girl have up to 20 seizures a day. So I made an appointment with a holistic Chiropractor. We met on Monday (8/25/08) with Dr. Tom Tatasciore, DC and he said that Marleigh's spine was way out of alignment, especially at the very top where the skull connects to the spinal cord. He did some gentle massage and adjusted her. I thought he was fantastic and I'm going to make an appointment for him to treat my neck too. He said he considers himself a healer and got a good feeling from Marleigh. He didn't think anything he could do would help reduce her seizures but I feel like anything to keep the overall health of the body is good. And we are worried that she is in pain during her spasms because she usually begins screaming about half-way through each episode.

So far the medicine hasn't helped much. After we meet with the neurologist on Tuesday I'll have more info.