He ate!

Well, sort of. I always put down a bowl for Milk when I feed everyone else, and he always either tries to bury it, or races to get away from it. Night before last, I gave him his bowl, and a few minutes later, I saw him stop in front of it, sniff, and then actually lick it five or six times! I was so excited. The next morning, he did the same thing. It's only twice in all these months, but maybe it's a start. This morning, I put a few pieces of dry food on top of the canned for him, but that wasn't enough to interest him - plus, as soon as Busy and Burble and Scruffy realized that there was dry on there (and how DO they know?), they jostled Milk out of the way, so even if he'd wanted to eat it, which he didn't, he couldn't have. But it's a start.

And the generic Keppra from Canada arrived on Tuesday afternoon - 7 days from the day I was notified that it had entered the US. I'm idly curious where it's been all that time. I feel a little bad that for years - since my beanie baby trading days, actually - I've had not-nice things to say about the Canadian Postal System. Maybe the problem isn't Canada - it's here?

Where is the Keppra?

Because of the greatly increased dosage of Keppra (generic), I've used up the last prescription from Canada a long time before I expected to. And I wasn't aware, until it was too late, that there were no REFILLS on that original prescription. So, I called Dr. G and asked him to fax a prescription for 200 pills this time (should give me a little more than 2 months worth and they won't have to break up a bottle). Which he did. I debated about using a different Canadian pharmacy because of the free shipping issue, but when I figured out the prices, even with the $10 shipping charge, my pills were considerably less expensive than the ones that other people on the epi-kitty site were buying in Canada. So, I decided to stick with the original. They were able to send the pills out on Monday of this week - and I got a tracking number that shows that they entered the "destination country" at 5:53 AM on 1/17/08. So where are they? It's 1/20/o8 as I type this. It says "Expresspost" as the carrier - but I don't know if that's only in Canada, or here. I have enough for one more dose of generics tonight at 2 AM, and then I have enough of the 90mg compounded capsules that we started out with to give him 180 mgs TID for the next two days, which I hope will be close enough to his usual dosage. Tomorrow, I guess I'll call Dr. G and get another prescription for a local pharmacy. Trouble is, the 250 mg pills aren't usually kept on hand here in pharmacies, because most humans take the larger dosage pills...... I know that Sam's Club had to special order their Keppra pills and I had to wait over the weekend for them to get the 250 mg pills in. (Wonder if I used up all of those pills? I must have - I cleaned up the pill corner last week, and the only extra keppra there was the bottle of compounded capsules.)

I noticed that on the email notification of shipping, it says that if I give permission, they can ship from their "international shipping center." One of those is in Texas, the person I talked to a couple months ago said. If that's the case, why am I waiting for deliveries from Canada? Need to check on that. It probably has something to do with getting a generic that isn't available yet in the US, I suppose.

I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned from this: I have to make sure the next time that I reorder EARLY. EARLY. EARLY. But WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

PHEW!

It happened again - I had to take my mother-in-law for a doctor's appointment, and Milk was nowhere to be found. I thought I'd wait and be "casual" until a half hour before I had to leave, in the hopes of being able to grab and pill him, but noooooooo...... So, the whole time I was gone, I was in a panic that he'd have another seizure the next morning - today, actually - since I don't know if it was the three-hours-late phenobarb pill on Monday that produced Tuesday morning's seizure. As it turned out, he was still among the missing when I got home. By the time I found him, managed the agony of kneeling on the floor, lifted up the sofa with my left shoulder and tried to grab one of his body parts with my right hand to drag him out, and then staggered to my feet again, his pill was two and a half hours late. So, I cleverly thought, I'll give him a smidge more phenobarb and see if that helps make up for the vanished hours. I still have a ton of the compounded 10mg capsules, so I gave him one of those, and - don't know if that's what did it or not - but anyway, no seizure this morning.

It should only be that simple and successful all the time. The little stinker has such an exquisite sense of time - he wanders through the kitchen at the exact time his pills are due every single day - that I know that these disappearances lately at pill time are intentional. Maybe he knows that the phenobarbital is doing major damage....

I have to go out this afternoon, but I was sneaky and grabbed him before I got ready to go. Not giving any more hints that it's time to hide.

#39 - short, but not all that sweet.

6:45 AM. It started very abruptly, with virtually no salivation, but a little jaw-snapping. The flopping was significantly reduced in violence - in fact, this was the first time I ever touched him while he was having a seizure; I was afraid he was gonna fall off, so I just sort of grabbed him by his lower body - he was laying on his right side - and slid him back away from the edge. The noise was different, too - instead of the distinct separate snarls, he made almost a continuous moaning kind of sound. All in all, the seizure lasted probably not more than 15 or 20 seconds. When it ended, he lay absolutely still for at least two minutes, with fairly frequent body jerks for the first 30 or 40 seconds, and then nothing. Eventually, he jumped down and headed off to the kitchen to find food. His coordination seemed unaffected, and while he clearly wanted something to eat right away, he wasn't panicky about it or anything.

So, now I'm left once again wondering if this was my fault. I couldn't find him yesterday for hours - crawled around looking under the couch and under the bed and up and down the stairs, with no sign of him. I did all the little tricks that usually get him to come out, and none of them worked. Finally, when his phenobarb pill was three hours late, he just appeared out of nowhere. I've never understood the whole thing about having to give the phenobarb at exactly the same time every day, when you can do a blood test anytime at all on the assumption that the drug reaches a level in the blood that stays consistent. Anyway, was the late pill the cause? Or was it that I'd reduced the phenobarb dosage 20% (2mg. per dose) a week ago? Previous occasions that I reduced the dosage, it seemed to take about a week to show up in a seizure. While the last phenobarb blood level was in the acceptable range - 32.4 - it was quite a bit higher than it had been, and I don't want to take a chance on going back to the higher dosage if there is any choice at all.

I'm so sorry to have seen the wonderful five and a half weeks of no seizures end.

It was my fondest desire.....

never to be sitting here again at the crack of dawn recording another damned seizure. But here we are, #38. I have been lulled into a false sense of security, right? I didn't even have the radar turned on for the preparatory foaming noises any more, so I don't know exactly what the beginning of this one was like. By the time I woke up enough to realize what was happening, he was flopping, and then the growling started, quite loud and vicious sounding. I didn't think to put my glasses on and turn on the light until after it was over, so I'm not sure about the salivation and other stuff. It seemed like it took forever to end, but that was probably because I was concentrating so hard (physically) on keeping him from flopping onto the floor. When it ended, he laid absolutely still for at least two minutes. Then he jumped down and headed off to look for something to eat. (Yay - food into him - I took advantage of an appetite that has been missing for days now, and after he ate about half a can of FF and wandered off, gave him some high-calorie, food-of-the-devil EVO dry.)

This may have been my fault. Five weeks seizure free. It seems almost miraculous. The signs that something was going on were there, however - and I even took him to the vet yesterday afternoon for bloodwork to see what his phenobarb level is. He has been wobblier lately than he has been for months. He fell off the cat tree twice in the last week - not when he was asleep, just didn't seem to physically have the strength to cling to it. When he shakes his head, he nearly tilts over. He has been eating virtually nothing voluntarily for days now. I'm back to bottlefeeding three or four times a day. And offering him everything under the sun to eat, (9 different kinds of dry food and another 7 of canned!) none of which he is interested in. Anyway, I have this need to reduce the phenobarb as much as possible because I'm afraid of what even the smaller dosage is doing to his liver. So, I thought I could go down to 1/2 of a 15mg tablet BID to replace the 10mg. compounded capsules. Only, and I don't know if this was solely inattention on my part, or what, but twice in the last 24 hours (10 separate doses of pills), I discovered one of his pills - once the 1/2 Keppra, and once the phenobarb tablet - outside his body long after I thought I got them into him. And now I'm on the verge of hysteria, afraid that this is going to precipitate one of those whole new series of seizures that happens when the medication dosage fails and it's harder to get control again. Puhleeze don't let that happen, God.

My poor sweet Milk.