[John] Yesterday was Halloween, and Jolena brought the kids and Jocelyn and her friend John S. to Microsoft to see all the other kids running around in their costumes.  We got some candy from my floor, took a quick tour of my office, and then headed to the cafeteria.  At the cafeteria we got some snacks, and Jolena was feeding Johanna.  Which worked fine until Johanna started slumping forward, and became unresponsive.  We tried to snap her out of it, unsuccessfully.  I picked her up, she was mostly limp, eyes open, and started carrying her to the car.  John S. and Jocelyn took Benjamin home in the PT Cruiser, and Jolena and I headed to the Emergency Room with Johanna.  Johanna's eyes were open, but she was not foaming at the mouth at all like her febrile seizure in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska in August.  I noticed her right arm was stiff and twitching slightly as I carried her to the car.  As we got to the car she seemed to be snapping out of it (the whole thing lasted about five minutes).  I held her on my lap, and she seemed to fall asleep or be very still most of the way to the E.R.  As we got to the E.R. she was becoming more alert and in the parking lot we called the consulting nurse and her pediatrician.  Since she didn't have a fever, we decided sitting in the E.R. was pointless, she was groggy, but if the seizure was passed there was nothing they could do.  I took her out of the car briefly to see if she could stand or walk still.  She could but was pretty uncoordinated.  We decided to take her home.

That was Wednesday, today she went to school, and all seemed normal until I got a call at work at 11:36a or so that Johanna had another seizure on the playground.  The school called the paramedics, and Jolena who was actually waiting in the parking lot to pick up Johanna, was on hand to go to the nurse's office.  The paramedic told me that she had not sustained any injuries in the fall due to the seizure.  They got the pediatrician on the line who got the pediatric neurologist on the line who wrote us a prescription for Keppra, 1 mL today to increase to 2 mL daily (forever!?) thereafter.  Jolena dropped Benjamin at a friend's house, picked me up and we went to the hospital to pick up her prescription.  We gave her the first dose and took her home.  She slept most of the afternoon and evening of All Saint's Day, and Jolena was up with her from 12am to 2am on Friday.

We kept her home from school on Friday and have not noticed any side effects from the medication, although we think she might be a little more prone to cry.  We'll keep blogging our experiences with Johanna's first anti-convulsive medication.

Key to Pictures: 

1. First meeting between Johanna and her pre-school-mates!
2. Circle time!  Topic is the generation of static electricity through the application of air containing latex bladder to the topmost follicle bearing appendage of various minor-aged participants, and subsequent attraction of that container to a vertical surface with net effect being the apparent suspension of that object in defiance of gravitational attraction.  All were rapt with attention.
3. Johanna and her table-mates!
4. Yep, our first project on our first day, get dirty.  We can't do that enough at home.  :)
5. Reading time with Miss Donelle.
6. Coach teaching Johanna the ins ...
7. ... and outs of one hula hoop ...
8. ... and then 2 hula hoops!
9. And finally clean up with the soapy sensory table!

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We got up early on 4/4, drove to Children's Hospital Medical Center, and checked in.  Johanna was fitted with her electrodes, a helmet, a little backpack for some electronics, and some arm splints.  Her home for the next 24-48 hours was to be a (fabulous!, spacious!, corner!) room with a video camera to watch her constantly.  Grandma Weisenfeld came along to help out.  Our task was to click a clicker every time we saw what we felt were potential seizures and log them in a binder.

Well, by 9pm that day we had preliminary report that what were seeing, based on EEG traces, were *not* seizures.  They were abnormal brain activity but not seizures.  We were asked to stay a full 24 hours to allow a trace to be taken of her sleeping, but were not expected to stay a full 48 hours.

We are so happy, and now think EEG stands for "Extremely Eternally Grateful."