Cierra had her MRI last Friday evening. She did really well. They normally sedate all kids under 8, but we decided to try it without sedation and after some coaxing from the tech and me, she got in the machine and did great. She got to watch Harry Potter during the MRI and I think that really helped. The neuro called today with the results and almost everything looks good. They didn't see any lesions, tumors, or structrual abnormalities, which is great. However, they did find a small, arachnoid cyst on the left side of her brain. The neuro assured me that it's nothing to be worried about, but we will need to monitor it by MRI every couple of years to make sure that it's not growing. Since her seizure activity is only on the right side of her brain, they are certain that the cyst is not the cause of seizures. This means that she has idiopathic (without a known cause) epilepsy, which means that she has a much higher chance of "growing out of it" as she gets older. About 80% of kids with this kind of epilepsy stop having seizures by adulthood. We are relieved that there isn't anything more serious going on.
Cierra has been on anti-seizure medication for a little over two weeks now and in the beginning we saw a huge decrease in the amount of seizures that she was having everyday. Unfortunately, they are slowly starting to increase again. She is still on a very low dose, so we increased it again a couple of days ago and I hope that it will continue to work and stop her seizures all together. We have a med check with the neuro at the end of this month, so we'll see what she says at that time. Thank you so much to all of our family and friends. We truly appreciate all of your thoughts and prayers. This has been a very hard summer for us and we are grateful to be surrounded by such a great support system.
5 comments:
I'm glad to hear that things aren't worse than they could be. What a strong girl Cierra is! I am so proud of her. Good luck with everything. Hopefully with the start of the school year things will get better for you guys.
It's good to hear that there's no tumor or structural cause for Cierra's seizures. I know Sophie is having fun sitting by her in school. I enjoyed your testimony today. I admire your strength through these trials.
I appreciated hearing your testimony on Sunday and I admire the strength you have as a mother. We're glad that there wasn't a more serious underlying problem with Cierra and hope that she will be able to grow out of the seizures one day.
I hope you know how much I admire you and how often I think about you. You are an amazing example to me of strength and faith. You have handled all of this so amazingly. It would be so easy to breakdown when faced with such trials, but you keep going and keep being a great mom. You really are an inspiration and I sincerely hope that things start to get easier for you ad your family.
Don't know what to say except that I love you! Hang in there! And we are so excited for you to come here!
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