Number 140

I'm back from New York and will post about it later (maybe) -- lots of walking the streets, a benefit that did pretty well for the cause, the creepy Joker photo of Bernie Madoff leering down from every newsstand in New York City, the incessant talk of said Madoff and my growing impatience with this story because I think it distracts from the tens of thousands more who've lost jobs and retirements, etc. and I'm also tired of hearing how nervous the really, really rich people are.

Anyway, I'm done posting about New York.

I talked to The Neurologist in the airport as I waited for my bags to come around the carousel at JFK. Even though I'd flown over three thousand miles to get away, some conversations just have to happen. I asked her whether the increase in "big" seizures and decrease in "little" seizures was acceptable. I told her that I hated ambiguity in antiepileptics -- that if a drug works, it works, right? Seizures stop and the stopping is dramatic.

That hasn't happened.

The Neurologist and I discussed the possiblity that the drug was helping with the little seizures but that the brain was thinking up new ways to have big seizures. Hmmm. She felt that we should give it more time. I acknowledged that the positive changes -- the lilt in Sophie's step, the alertness in her eyes, the reduction in the constant daily clusters of spasms -- made me hopeful.

We're giving it a few more weeks and then we'll reassess. In the meantime, I've made another appointment to see The Homeopath in Arizona at the end of the month. I'll tell you about that later.

Now I have a joke. I was rereading a medical paper titled "Rufinamide for generalized seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome" (fun reading, right?) and understood the study was done on 139 persons. The study was done in Cleveland and the average age of those studied was around 12. Since we put Sophie on rufinamide, I've visited numerous epilepsy/seizure disorder websites and posted enquiries about it, asking whether anyone had a child on it or whether anyone had tried it.

I haven't received a single reply.

I am now wondering whether Sophie is Patient Number 140.

Just wondering. And that's a picture of a guinea pig up there.