An update on Miss Jenna...

Every parent hates seeing a call from the daycare in the middle of the day.  It's almost never a good thing.  However, that is better than sitting in a conference room and having your boss walk your husband in unannounced.  You know when that happens the news can't be good.

In my case, this happened this past Wednesday, and the issue was that they thought Jenna may have had a seizure at daycare.  JP had been trying to call me, but because I had been in a meeting, he wasn't able to.  So he did the only other thing he could think of....he showed up at my work.  

It's late, and I have been rehashing the details all week.  At the end of the day, after talking with her teacher at daycare, the doctors at the children's ER at Palmetto Health were convinced that she had, in fact, had a seizure, so they admitted her for observation and scheduled her for an EEG the next morning.  Long story short - the EEG came back normal, she was her normal, playful, sweet self while under observation, and we have no idea what happened.

We know she has reflux and it causes a reaction known as Sandifer Syndrome (read about it here: Sandifer Syndrome), which can mimic seizure activity, especially in babies.  When they descirbed it to us, we knew immediately that she had it, as the symptoms they outlined were things she has been doing since she was born.  The challenge, though, is that what happened at daycare went beyond this (with eye rolling and a period of lethargy following her episode) and I have witnessed two events in the past week, that though I don't believe were seizures, are not normal and were not during times when she had been fed.  So....

That leaves us with a lot of questions and no real answers.  As her pediatrician pointed out, seizures are hard to diagnose and hard to rule out.  Further, babies have all kinds of abnormal neurological reactions to the rapid growth they are undergoing, so this could be something in that vein, or it could be something more serious.  The difficult part at this point is that we just don't know.  So we wait.  And we observe.  And we pray that this is something that resolves itself and has no further manifestation.

And we know that some of you are finding out about this now.  We apologize if that is the case.  It's just not possible - physically or emotionally - to reach out to everyone in the process of this.  And we waited until we were through it to put it out in a public forum - both so we could focus on taking care of her during this process and because we wanted there to be some sort of resolution before we put it out for the world to read.

Thank you for your love, support and prayers.  Waiting and feeling helpless are two things JP and I do not do well.  Especially when it comes to Jenna.  Peace of heart during difficult times is a gift, and one that we have experienced this week (although we are exhausted!).  I truly believe the power of your prayer brought that peace to us, and this is truly a precious gift.  Again, thank you.

I have been praying for discovery should we need to address an undiagnosed medical problem.  However, I have also prayed and my heart is still - no point in freaking out when there isn't anything in front of us to freak out over.  We'll observe her, and if there are any issues of concern when we go back for her 6 month appointment in a few weeks, we will discuss a neurology consult then.  Please pray for us as we move forward from this point.

I, of course, had to take pictures during the process.  Though exasperated with me for doing so, JP quietly let me.  Here are some of the pictures.  First are pictures of Jenna in her little hospital gown.  Poor thing was poked and prodded to death at this point, but she really is a trooper, and kept a smile on her face the whole time....except for at the end of the EEG prep.  She was pretty frustrated at that point, but she fell right asleep during the EEG, so we didn't have the struggle of trying to keep her still.

As always, our gratitude to everyone for all of the love and support.  Jenna has an amazing network of people all around her.  Her spirit family is great and wide, which is a true blessing.