Sitting in the kitchen, playing on Pogo, when I hear growling and snarling from the living room. I couldn't find Milk. The other three cats were all pointed toward the couch, though, and while I was looking for him, his little white tail emerged from under the couch skirt. It was awful, because I couldn't get to him - the couch is too heavy for me to hold up with one hand and try to do anything for him with the other. I could hear him banging against the frame of the couch. Probably about a minute long seizure. Then there was quiet, and eventually, he crawled out from underneath the couch. He was soaked. Even his right back leg was wet, for some reason, and his tail - much more than the usual places where he foams on his jaw and cheek and neck. He ate some more, fairly frantically - probably more than he's eaten all at once in months, and wandered around a little. He seemed alert and coordinated.
I called Dr. L, and she is supposed to call me back. A friend and I had planned to go gambling, but now I need to wait for her to call, and I'm not comfortable about leaving Milk here by himself. This is where my unresolved questions about "What's a cluster seizure?" and "Are all more-than-one seizures clusters and cause for panic and valium?" come up again. I haven't felt, other times when he's had more than one seizure - even the day when he had two distinct seizures in ten minutes - that they were connected or fueling each other or whatever. And it seems like the decision to use rectal valium should hinge on more than just the fact of the seizure occurring. Shouldn't the length and violence and timing be taken into consideration?
I always feel like the medical people involved think that I'm thrown into a panic about Milk's having an occasional seizure. Which isn't the case at all. I'd be perfectly satisfied to get to a point where he has one seizure a month. The question is - how do we GET to that point? I was thinking the other day, looking at the seizure record down the side of this blog - Milk's had, well, as of right this minute - 30 seizures, and for all of them but the first two weeks - around 9 seizures or so, he was on medication, lots of medication that doesn't seem to be working all that well. I don't think there's anyone else on the epifelines board who has had so many seizures in six months. Apparently, Milk's epilepsy is going to turn out like Puffer's diabetes - atypical and impossible to get a handle on. These poor cats - they would probably both have been better off if they'd ended up with someone more competent.
I gave Milk his first Keppra pill of the day a couple hours after the first seizure, and I just gave him his phenobarb pill a half hour after the second seizure. I HOPE that's enough medication to control things for the rest of the day, till the next pill. Please....
My shirt smells like Milk's saliva.
