Merry Christmas!

The middle-of-the-night freight train

Well, we're still having the periods of intense activity during the night. Every night. As I said before, better this than seizures...... In a way, it's kind of funny. He spends endless amounts of time either stealing the straws from my tea mug, or finding the out-of-the-way places he's hidden them, and triumphantly carrying them around all over the house. Twice last night, he woke me up - I thought he was having a seizure - the jaw-clicking - but it was actually the straw snapping when he chewed on it.

His need to always be snuggled up against one of the other cats has diminished recently, and now, he wants to be curled up in my armpit as soon as I sit in my chair. (Which does interfere with knitting.) It's very touching. He keeps trying to get closer and closer, and then he stretches his skinny little front leg out and pats me with his paw. Honestly, I am convinced that inside this wispy little white cat is some sort of miraculous being that I've been blessed to find. I look in his eyes and see - well, I can't even describe it. I was so driven to see him in that cage at Petsmart almost two years ago for some reason I can't explain, but I am absolutely positive that it was meant to be. And I am so glad.

Well, it happened again.

Only earlier. Up at 4AM this morning - no seizure, but bouncing all over the place for two hours. I really wonder if this is related to the Keppra. None of my cats wakes me up anymore before the alarm goes off. And once he finally did get back to sleep, he was really out of it. I am worrying - hopefully unnecessarily - about this huge dosage. Although, I don't see any physical signs that there's anything going on aside from this weird middle-of-the-night thing. His coordination is quite normal, appetite about as stinky as usual, everything in general the same. I'd like to call and leave a message for Dr. Axlund to ask him if this is normal, and if he thinks that maybe we should do the Keppra blood test he mentioned somewhere along the way. Or someone who knows about Keppra. (I was even questioning the technician at Dr. G's, who takes it. Of course, she's not a cat....)

Also ordered the compounded phenobarb from the pharmacy in Michigan that Hope uses. I didn't even ask what the cost would be. I just hope that it gets here by Friday.

Curious/weird

Milk just woke me at 5:20. Prime seizure time, but he wasn't having a seizure. He walked around on me a little bit, hopped on and off the furniture, and eventually raced around the living room. It was definitely odd behavior, but since it didn't seem to involve incipient brain damage, I wasn't about to discourage it. I thought maybe he'd want something to eat - if it was actually some sort of "substitute seizure" - but he really didn't. After maybe 10 minutes of activity, he hopped to the top of the cat tree tunnel - a good five feet off the ground - and just sat there, quite relaxed. At 5:40, he closed his eyes and started to nod off, which made me nervous for no particular reason. I went into the kitchen to record this, and he followed me, then went back out to sit on the short cat tree.

I'm not sure what to think. The timing makes me think that, if he hadn't awakened, this would probably have been a seizure, but I don't know if that's likely to happen or not. I would happily be awakened every day at 5:30 if he just wants to wander around and no seizures are involved.

He seemed to be feeling the effects of the greatly increased dosage more late yesterday. There were a couple of times that I noticed that he had a sort of hard-to-describe "startled" look on his face. (Yeah, I know, I know, but he did. Something odd about his eyes....) And when he was ready to go to sleep for the night, he just flopped down and never moved a muscle . No turning around to make a nest, no last minute grooming, just awake one minute and sound asleep the next.

It's possible that one of the other cats woke him at 5:20. I'm beginning to think that the four of them spend the night stomping around on top of me, and I'm such a sound sleeper that I just don't know it. I have noticed that the ones I start out with when I go to sleep are not necessarily the ones who are there when I wake up, no matter what time that is.

And now I kind of hate to go back to sleep - it's 6AM, though - because I'm afraid that I'll be unpleasantly awakened by snarling and growling in a half hour. Rats. Never satisfied.

And another one, huge dose of Keppra and all....

#37 . Although, I want to make myself feel somewhat cautiously optimistic that it was "better", somehow. Near as I can figure, the new dosage of Keppra is 187mg and a little more. That's a lot, it seems to me; at least, it's a lot more than he was taking before, especially when you multiply it by TID. He's had four of the increased doses. But there was a noticeable difference in this seizure compared to the last four or five. It didn't take as long to get started - he did a small amount of preliminary jaw snapping, but the growling started almost immediately, and it continued as almost a high-pitched wail until it abruptly ended. The flopping was very strong - I was almost sure he was going to end up on the floor - but very quickly over. I would estimate that the entire seizure lasted somewhere between 20 and 25 seconds. It ended like the video seizure did - he just stopped flopping and growling, and laid still. There was a minimal amount of jerking after it was over, too - his tail did a sort of "whiplash" thing twice, but that was really pretty much the extent of it. He laid for at least a minute, possibly more. When he jumped down, he was more coordinated than he has been - he didn't fall or act shaky. He did start to walk off in the opposite direction of the kitchen, but when I called him to come and eat, he came and did eat. He seemed to want to walk, but it wasn't the pacing that I used to see with the earlier seizures, either; then, he would rapidly, almost seeming driven, walk in a huge circle all around the living room and kitchen. This time, he seemed more interesting in being in the living room/dining room than eating. Right now, he's meatloafing nearby. Waiting for me to finish this so he can go back to sleep, I guess. Except that the blanket's soaked.....

I don't know now who exactly to report this to. Dr. A., the neurologist from Ohio, said that Dr. L, the Internal Medicine vet from here, should be our contact, but I don't have any idea what her reaction to the dosage increase (and the lack of pressure to have an MRI) is. I feel like he's the one that should know that there are differences in this seizure, not that there's anything I want him to do or say, I suppose. But it would seem like he's the one who would know if the change means anything or not - if it represents positive improvement because the seizure was so much shorter, or if it represents negative/failure because it happened so soon after the last one, or if it doesn't mean anything at all. I wish I could just email him or something. I just realized that it's Saturday. Maybe next week, I'll call his office and ask what they think I should do. It would be different/better if I had more of a relationship with Dr. L., or if I could actually talk to her when I call, instead of relaying messages through a technician. And it just occurred to me that I don't know if there is any testing/bloodwork that should be done on a regular basis or what, to see if his liver's okay or his kidneys, since Keppra's processed through the kidneys, I believe.

Milk's been calmly sitting in the same place, looking around but not jerking or acting very post-seizure-ish for more than a half hour. I guess I'll record Scruffy's information and see if he needs to be shot, and then try to sleep a little more, till time for Milk's next pill. Not much of a life for any of the three of us, sadly.