72-Hour EEG

Well, I survived the dreaded 72-hour ambulatory video EEG monitoring.  It actually wasn't as bad as I had anticipated.  I mean, don't get me wrong, it wasn't all roses, but I had reallllllly been dreading the 3 day diagnostics in my home.  Here's the gist of how it went:

A lady from Global Neuro Diagnostics came to my house and set up 2 cameras:  1 in my bedroom, which filmed only my side of the bed, and 1 in the living room, aimed at the recliner.  I had lots of instructions, but the main instruction was to try to be in front of one of the cameras at all times.  Additionally, she glued 23 electrodes to my head and a couple to my chest (to monitor my heart rate).  Then she fashioned all the wires into a fancy little "pony tail" sleeve to keep them from getting tangled, and they were connected to this little portable device I had to sling over my shoulder for the duration of the evaluation.  (Of course, when I was sleeping, I would just keep it above my head, and it didn't really interfere with my ability to toss & turn in my sleep).

The evaluation was scheduled to take place from Saturday morning until Tuesday morning.  My episodes had tapered off substantially before the evaluation, and in fact, I had gone 3 days completely episode free, prior to the eval.  So, Jeremy and I were frustrated, feeling like we were about to toss our money down the drain for an unnecessary evaluation.  But, it was really too late to cancel.

Well, I'm glad we kept the evaluation scheduled because I had episodes each night at bed time, and additionally, I had 3 episodes on Sunday, and 1 awesome (ha!), classic (aura + arm, face, and abdominal muscles contractions all involved) episode on Monday.  Now, of course, I would prefer for these to go away completely, and I am still believing on faith, in complete Divine healing, but if I am still having periodic episodes, this was the time to have them!  So, for that I give a big Praise GOD!

At first, I was afraid the kids would want to pull the electrodes off my head.

They were all over my head, and the worst part was that I couldn't take a shower or wash my hair for 3 days!

I wore a hat, to keep the kids from messing with my head, which worked pretty well!

...until they decided they wanted to wear my hat, instead :)

Here's the "big picture" with my lovely sling and the camera that faced my bed.
There was another one in the living room.

The worst part of all was washing all the glue out of my hair!  It was AW.FUL!
But, alas, I was relieved after taking the longest shower in the history of the world, and back to my CLEAN self again!

The results will take about 10 business days to read.  I was supposed to have a follow-up appointment on Monday, 2/27, but it has been rescheduled to Wednesday, March 7.  In the meantime, I'm praying that no news is good news :)  I'll post an update, as soon as we know more!