A Bit of Excitement

The last several days have been very different than what I had planned. My parents stopped here on their way home from Ohio. They came to the swim banquet with us on Wednesday night and planned to leave for home Thursday morning. If you know my dad, you know how anxious he was to get back home to his dog and cats and favorite chair. We were sitting on the little round stools of the middle school cafeteria. My mom left the room for a minute, and I was talking with a friend. My dad took his glasses off, and then looked at me as if to get me to look behind me. It seemed that he wanted me to look at something without anyone knowing. I was confused and looked around and asked him what. After about a minute, I realized that he couldn't speak or move. I called 911 and someone got my mom. While I was on the phone with the dispatcher, my dad regained the ability to talk and move. The rescue squad came and checked him over, and then took him to the hospital just to check him out. He is still there. He had a 24 hour EEG on Thursday to Friday to determine what was going on. The doctor was not sure that what he was having were seizures because there was no shaking involved. Yesterday afternoon, however, after the neurologist viewed the tape of the EEG, he said that they were seizures on the left side of his brain, but not the right. They started him on anti-seizure meds immediately, and performed several more tests last night to determine the cause of the seizures. The possibilities include an infection or a mass. Since my dad has wires in his spine from the spinal cord stimulator, they can't perform an MRI, so they had to settle for a CAT scan. When I talked with him this morning, he said he felt better than he has for a very long time. He got a good night of sleep, and the anti-seizure medicine is helping. So for some time he has been affected by whatever is going on in his brain. Please keep him and my mom in your prayers. Hopefully today we will find out what the cause of the seizures are and be able to treat that as well. He has resigned himself to staying in the hospital, and this morning even admitted that it was better to be here and find out why he's having the seizures than to just get some medicine to stop them and go home, which was his motive since Wednesday night. Mom is a rock. She has been staying here at night, so is getting good sleep. But she is at the hospital much of the day. They want to observe him on the medicine to make sure that it is the right kind, so he may be here until the middle of next week. I'll keep you posted.