Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Should I blame diabetes?

....probably not, but I can't say that the possibility hasn't crossed my mind.

We're currently in the fourth week of hospital admission with our daughter. The reason: Infantile spasms, a rare form of epilepsy (apparently there are only about 20 new cases per year in Denmark). We first noticed something not right a coupleof days after she'd had her 5-month vaccination. Her whole body would be shaking in cramps for 10-20 sec. after which she'd need a few seconds to return to her normal self. Our first contact with doctors and hospital had them concerned, but without any possibility to make a diagnosis because Amanda was perfectly fine in their hands and we had no documentation for her seizures. When we got that, we returned to the hospital the next morning, exactly a week after her vaccination. While I sat waiting for the doctor to have time to view our video, she had two seizures in just 10 min. Once the doctor and nurses came around and saw the video, Amanda has another seizure, the third in as many hours, and suddenly everything went very fast. 

The day of the admission and the following ones, numerous tests were run to find a possible cause, but so far nothing has been found. In this investigation, I obviously cannot help but consider the possibility that the spasms could have something to do with my diabetes, e.g. a consequence of one of the severe hypos I experienced while pregnant with Amanda. The fact that I myself suffered from absence epilepsy for a few years as a child, also brought my thoughts to it being something genetic. I'm also inclined to think that the vaccination had something to do with this, if not as a cause then as a triggering factor, but so far we don't know, and may never will.

All we can do at the moment, however, is hope that he doctors will soon figure out a treatment plan that can keep her seizure free until she, hopefully, will outgrow this. Today is Amanda's 6 months birthday, and this is not the way we'd hope to be celebrating it :-(

4 comments:

Pearlsa said...

(((HUGS))) and sending both you and Amanda positive thoughts.

Heidi said...

Thanks, Pearlsa - we need that :-)

diabetes said...

Wishing you all the best. Always think positive and remember there are so many people who have diabetes but living a normal life. Stay happy!

Heidi said...

Well, I generally think positive and do believe that I live a normal life. This post wasn't particularly about my diabetes, but more about the frustration of getting a serious diagnosis for our child, and wondering whether diabetes could have anything to do with it. In cases like that you really want to find something/someone to blaim, but I don't believe that diabetes was the actual culprit here.