Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Sent Home Early

Kudos to Miami Children’s Hospital

They run a tight ship at Miami Children’s Hospital. We’ve stayed at four hospitals in the last four years since we’ve been back in South Florida: St. Mary’s in West Palm Beach, Joe DiMaggio’s in Hollywood, West Boca Medical Center, and Miami Children’s. Miami Children’s stands head and shoulders above the others for these reasons:

  • They put the patients and their families first in each and every interaction. It’s obvious that this is a part of the corporate culture.
  • They are organized.
  • There is always a plan and they plan for adjustments to the plan.

When families are dealing with trauma and hardships with their children, these three things lighten the load. In fact, this demonstrates a cognizant effort on the hospital’s part to help shoulder the burden. This has tremendous therapeutic and healing affect on a family working through some of life’s most difficult trials – that is, children afflicted with sickness, disabilities, or injuries.

A change of plans

The original plan for our hospital stay was to be admitted from Monday through Friday of this week. But doctors on Allie’s case were able to collect all the data they needed on Monday and Tuesday to accurately diagnose and categorize Allie’s seizures.

For the past three years, our doctors had doubts about the kind of seizure activity we were describing to them and they had very little success capturing data about her seizures beyond our description of them and some home video we’ve shot. Allie did not cooperate well in previous attempts to capture data so understanding, diagnosis, and treatment were hit-or-miss.

Allie is having tonic seizures. Her seizures originate in her brain's right frontal lobe. Doctors arrived at this conclusion with data gathered from an extensive MRI on Monday as well as analysis of video EEG information captured during two strong seizures Tuesday morning.

This information does not change life for us much. The doctors assured us that Allie will continue to have seizures, but there is no reason to believe that they will become worse than they are any time soon and that we just need to continue to care for Allie the way we have been.

What that means for you if you love Allie or have been tracking with us over the years is that you need to keep praying for her – and us. Since 2007 we’ve been crowd sourcing your prayers here on this blog and on our Facebook pages.

Sometimes I feel a little weird about telling the world so much about what we go through, but I don’t regret that people pray for Allie and Susan and me and that we are encouraged by your comments. People I don’t interact with very much on the job stop me and tell me they read this blog and it takes away the aloneness that comes with living a life that has so many limits.

Today somebody reached out to the Charming and Beautiful Susan from three thousand miles away and told us that his church’s quilting ministry is making Allie a prayer quilt. This person is a friend of a friend whose heart has been moved with compassion. So as weird as I feel about putting it all out there, I’ll anxiously wait for the arrival of a package sent to us from people we don’t know and will probably never meet but have serendipitously come across our story.

I recognize their ministry to us is the hand of God on our lives.

allie-with-iPhone

Day Three at Miami Children's Hospital: Preliminary Report

Sleep deprivation was the goal last night. Mission accomplished.

The reason we are here at Miami Children's Hospital is to capture good data about Allie's seizures, to determine what kind of seizures they are, and to locate the part of the brain the seizures originate.

Monday, our first day in the hospital, we started the day with a thorough MRI. Allie was sedated for this three hour procedure. She had these specific MRI procedures done:
  • Functional
  • 3D
  • non-contrast
  • contrast
Here are some findings.

Allie is having tonic seizures. Her seizures originate in her brain's right frontal lobe. Doctors arrived at this conclusion with data gathered from the MRI as well as analysis of video EEG information captured during two strong seizures Tuesday morning.

Today (Wednesday, day three in the hospital), there has been discussion of another MRI. Doc's drastically reduced Allie's seizure meds to spur more seizures. This also deprives Allie - and the Charming and Beautiful Susan and me - of normal sleep which also causes seizure activity to spike.

A common discovery of an MRI in people with brain damage is the affected regions of the brain are shriveled. This never surprises doctors. Damaged areas of the brain are not used and, therefore, do not develop. They shrivel.

Docs confirmed that the damaged areas of Allie's brain have shriveled.

There's a finality to this report that makes me profoundly sad.