First - no seizure this morning, thank God. Although, I still didn't get any sleep, since Milk abruptly jumped down at 6:00 AM - prime seizure time- and started eating out of a bowl of food nearby. So, I had to get up and get him fresh food, and then sit and watch him for an hour and a half to see if he was going to have a seizure or not. Which led me to wonder, can a seizure be knocked off track by some distraction, for example, and then not occur? Since I wake up so immediately when he starts getting ready to have a seizure, I wonder if maybe there is something that could make his brain say to itself, "Oh, that's way more interesting than what I was GOING to do; I'll save this seizure for later....." Like, what if a seizure is just getting ready to start, and he sniffs something he just loves, or something horrible, say, or if - like the last two, I had to pick him up and move him to a safer place to have the seizure? Probably not likely. I'd gladly do all sorts of dances if it'd stop the process.
Yesterday afternoon, after much trauma and agony - Rege screwed up the printer AGAIN, and he never mentions that he's done it; in fact, he always denies that it was him, the jerk - I had made an appointment to take Milk to the vet to get bloodwork done 1) to send to Antech for phenobarb levels, to test my theory about why he's suddenly eating again and having seizures all over the place. (The phenobarb level has fallen to a place where it's not ruining his appetite, but it's also not controlling the seizures.) and 2) to Auburn for testing of the Keppra levels. Which takes at least 10 days, I guess. I couldn't print out the Auburn forms that I had to have because the PRINTER WASN'T WORKING, so I ended up emailing the pages to my friend Sandy, and then she printed them, I went to her house and picked them up, came home and packed up Milk in the carrier and we dashed off to the vet's. With the gas tank on EMPTY and the little gas tank picture all lit up. Story of my life. I'm still waiting to hear from Dr. G. about the phenobarb levels - usually, the results would be back by now. I don't know what I'll do if it turns out that the levels aren't low. I did try a day of increased (by another 1/8 pill) Keppra, but it really made Milk wobbly and uncoordinated. I hadn't ever seen side effects like that till the last increase at the beginning of May when this round of seizures began.
Okay - just got the phenobarb results :
24.? something-or-another-that-I-can't-remember-even-though-I-asked-Dr.-G.
-what-it-was-twice. SO, I do think my theory is right about the level having fallen to too low a point to effectively contribute to controlling his seizures. Now, the question is, how much do we increase the phenobarb by, if anything, before it screws up his eating again? Dr. G. thought that it might be worth trying to see if there's some sort of "pattern" to his seizures - like, it was three months with no seizures, and then a bunch of them, and wait to see if it was repeated. Well, #1, although I didn't say it to him - that's information that's visible with his seizure record (over on the left side here), and there's clearly NO pattern. And my tolerance for never getting more than three hours sleep is pretty much at its end. Plus - it's bad enough that most of his seizures have occurred when he was sleeping on me - what if it starts happening when I'm out? There was a guy on the epikitty board last week who said that his cat wedged itself between the wall and the couch and then had a seizure, and when he got home from work, the cat was covered with blood from bashing his head against the wall. I can't bear the thought of him having seizures (and frantically looking for food!) alone. I need him to be controlled as fully as possible. Period. If I have to go back to bottlefeeding him, so be it.
I still have to call and see if the IM vet will give me another vial of liquid valium. I hate the thought of even asking them. Plus, they are moving to their new office building in June, so the place is probably mass confusion. Nothing's ever simple.
