The Daily Hairald

Last week Ammon's aide (angel, really) BreeAnne notified me that Ammon had a seizure at school. I was a wreck the rest of the day because she said it was one of the worst ones she had seen him have. From time to time over the last 6 months Ammon has been having little moments of "checking out." His eyes roll back in his head and he spaces out for a few seconds. This time she said his hands shook as well. He has had them as well at home and it is never fun.


The week prior to this happening, we had gone to a neurologist. ( We weren't able to see his neurologist,Dr. Kerr; she is on medical leave until March.)Dr. Nelson scheduled an EEG for us, which is a way to monitor the electrical activity in the brain to see if there's been any seizure activity. On Sunday night, we had to keep him awake until midnight (three hours past his bedtime) and wake him up two hours earlier than his normal time, the goal being that he would fall asleep during the EEG. Wondering if he would actually stay still for the test, I was nervous about it.

On Monday morningwe went to Utah Valley hospital for the test. Zachary came with us to help me entertain Ammon. Zac is always the perfect side kick in these situations. When Sam had pnemonia a few years ago and was in the hospital, Zach was the one that wanted to come and help. He ended up staying with us in his hospital room all week with Sam and slept on the couch. He has a gift for cheering people up.


 After we arrived a nurse showed us into a room with a bed! Ammon's FAVORITE thing to do is to strip down to his pullup and climb under covers. He was giddy and climbed right up on the bed. The nurse began marking up his head with a red pencil and measuring with what looked to me an instrument from an ancient tomb.  Then she stuck 24 leads to different parts of his head and one on each shoulder. She turned off the lights and we all crossed our fingers hoping he would doze off to dreamland. He lay there so still but never fell asleep. Oh well,I was amazed at how well he did. Way to go Ammon! After 40 minutes of lying in the dark she came in and turned on a strobe light. I wasn't sure how he would react to the light. He layed there transfixed on it (bottom picture).

Let's hope they were able to get a good reading for the test.