Nate is taking a late afternoon nap after his busy day, so I thought I'd update his site. He had an eye Dr appt today for an exam. Surprisingly, the Dr did not find any obvious signs of eye problems from the stroke, but instead found stigmatisms in both eyes (totally unrelated)! She said he was farsighted and on the borderline of needing glasses, but because of his age it can change and get better (or worse). So she said to follow up in 6 months to see how it is progressing and we will re-address it then. However, she said there could be still some visual field cuts from the brain damage, but until he is older it will be hard to tell. She still referred us to the Arizona Foundation for the Blind. She said they can evaluate him and see if there is some eye issues they can address which would be able to help in his development. Obviously, he is not blind but said all sorts of kids with eye problems and disabilities can benefit from their services. It was an interesting visit but he did pretty well considering he had to get his eyes dialiated, held down and examined. He had to get about 10 vials of blood drawn yesterday for various tests. I didn't know he had that much blood in him! He turned into an evil screeming banshee while they were holding his arm down for that long to get all that blood. It was kind of funny because it was more like a tantrum than he was in pain. He just wanted his arm back and then he was fine! His neurologist had us up one of his medications (Topomax) last week to see if that might help the seizures more. Instead, it just made him more dopey and unmotivated, so we made the decision to go back down after a few days as it didn't seem to do much for the spasms. I can't remember if I've mentioned this, but Nate has been having sleep issues for months now, probably around the time his seizures started and he got on all the meds. He went from being a baby that slept through the night at 8 weeks old to waking up about 5 nights of the week at around 3 am ready to party. Some times he wakes up crying too! We have tried all sorts of things to help him sleep better, but nothing really seems to work. We just keep praying his sleep issues get better with time or with seizure control. I have read about other stroke kids having sleep issues too, so it might just be a result of the brain issue, but I think it is more seizure related since it started around then or soon after. It is tough to be constantly sleep deprived - on all of us! Thankfully, he has slept through the night the past 2 nights, so it is nice to have a little break once in a while. I can pretty much take on the world if I have enough sleep!
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