Bram's Epilepsy Diary 1998
January 1998
Late evening , one day this month saw Bram's first seizure. I remember sitting watching tv when he suddenly staggered, fell against a wall and went rigid. This was followed by frothing at the mouth and a frantic paddling with his legs. I panicked! Within a couple of minutes it was all over and I then realised what had happened. The next morning I spoke to my vet and came away with the hope that the seizure had been due to hydroxyzine, an antihistamine he'd been put on for his allergies. We stopped it and hoped for no more seizures.
June 1998
This month has seen a return of Bram's seizures. On the 23rd he had 2 seizures and was thus taken to the vets for bloodwork etc. Had a small seizure on 25th so started him on phenobarbital 1/4 of a 1 1/2 grain tablet (~32.5mg) twice daily . Bloodwork all came back as normal.
July 1998
This month Bram had 3 seizure like episodes, 2 likely partials with a lot of twitching and 1 grand mal (GM). His PB was raised to 1/2 tablet (48.5mg) twice daily. Thankfully the meds don't appear to be causing side effects that others I've heard from have suffered.
August 1998
August has been a bad month. The number of incidences of twitching has increased to almost daily and he had 2 episodes of GM's. One was a single but the other was 4 within a 1/2 hour. His recovery has also started becoming protracted taking up to 24 hours for the ataxia to subside. The vet suggested thinking about putting him on KBr for the clusters and also getting a neurological work up. The cost of the work up will likely be over $1000 so decided to wait for the moment.
September 1998
A better month seizure wise. Only 1 episode of 3 GM seizures and a couple of days of twitching. The only thing to spoil things was his allergies playing up - he has chewed his feet and scratched at his face until they bled. Thankfully the dermatology department at the vet school are enrolling him in a trial which will help us by paying for his allergy work up.
October 1998
The start of the month saw some partial seizures where Bram lay down, started ahead and was semi responsive. He also had 3 GM's one day so we decided to put him onto Potassium bromide at 700mg a day. Additionally this month the dermatologist found he was allergic to a load of grasses and pollens, so we are having an allergy vaccine made up.
November 1998
Started the allergy vaccine this month. Thankfully Bram had no GM's but was drowsy and ataxic a lot of the month. As he's only recently started the KBr than it is not possible to determine if due to the bromide or allergy vaccine although the dermatologist thinks it is most likely the bromide.
December 1998
Having being on PB for 6 months we did bloodwork this month. We did PB, KBr and Chemscreen and found that KBr and chemscreen were fine with PB being below therapeutic levels. During the month we notice a definite deterioration in Bram. he has become increasingly quiet, is not eating well and is having an increasing number of seizures, with partials/twitching episodes happening almost every day. Additionally on exam he has been found to have a conscious proprioceptor deficit on his right side.
Towards the end of the month the deterioration in Bram's condition has become very obvious. He is very unsteady on his feet and falls a lot. We have decided to get a neurology consultation as we are now very concerned about his health.
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