Jay and his family with Bre and Martino and his wife, with his son along with Eldar and his daughter. And who knows how many others there are who are or have gone through some pretty bad trials with their children.
Our daughter Karla was just 11 months old, when she had her first seizure. I was employed by the Federal Civil Service and had gotten the chance to go to a Power Generation Course at Fort Belvoir for about 2 1/2 month course. Karla was going to be 1yr old that next Jan. and I'd always heard that you don't want to miss that time in a child's and so I bought a travel trailer, sold our mobile home and took them with me. While we were out there, one evening Karla had that 1st seizure and we took here to the military hospital on Belvoir. She had developed a fever just before the seizure. So, the doctors just figured that the seizure was because of the fever. I took them back to Little Rock for Christmas (my school was on Christmas Break for 1 week) and I went back to Fort Belvoir to finish my last 2 weeks of school. While I was there, Karla had another seizure and I know that Brenda (my Wife) was having a time dealing with the situation and I was abut to go nuts because I was so far away and had no idea what was happening, until we could make contact. When we all got back together and were home, she would have a fever and a seizure would follow and we'd go to the emergency room. Finally we got a proper diagnosis and she was said to have a "Seizure Disorder" (didn't want to call it epilepsy). At any rate, she went on having seizures off and on and went through every medication for her kind of seizure, that you can think of and 2 "Drug Studies". Up until she was about 14 yrs old, no one seemed too concerned about the effects of having those seizures until we learned from the last Doctor change (we are still with him BTW) and we were told that every time a person has a seizure, the brain gets hot and if there is not enough blood flow to the brain, then brain cells die! Now THAT got us really worried! When Karla was 15yrs old, She went through testing to see if she was a candidate for surgery to remove the left tempral (spelling?) lobe and she wasn't a candidate yet. We were kinda relieved because at one point, they would have shaved her head, put her under, cut the top of her skull and lifted it off, brought her partially back so they could "short" each area of her brain to see just what each area did.
And that's why we weren't anxious to have that done just yet. Then, the last day of the 11th grade of school in 96', she had a Gran Mol (spelling again) seizure and was not coming out of it. Brenda called 911 while I was trying to get her to come out of it (It worked with the other type of seizures). Then on the way to the hospital, all of a sudden the ambulance sped up to about 90mph and I just stayed right with that ambulance and my wife didn't even know that we were going that fast, she was physically in our van but mentally, she was in that ambulance. By about 3hrs later, the ER Doctor said that normally the patient would be keep over night for observation, but he felt that she could do just as well at home because we knew enough about her problem that we could take care of her at that point. That October 7th 1996, she qualified as a candidate for that surgery (by then the procedure had come a long way and wasn't near as complicated) and she had that surgery and, while she still has other problems, she has been able to have more of a life than we ever thought she would have. Presently, it has been noticed that she has periods that her heart beats rather fast and they are trying to find out why. Hopefully it will be something that can be easily handled. That is basically the life we have had, as far as children goes. Karla is an only child BTW, we didn't think it would be right to have any more because Karla would need so much attention. We wouldn't take
AnyThing for her!
Take care, Bill
