EEG

It occurred to me today that there's all this talk about seizures, but many of you may not really know what's going on. I found some EEG's online so that people could see what's going on.

In the EEG below, the parts on the edges are normal behavior. The part in the middle is during an "absence" (pronounced a fancy french way, but if you say it the old-fashioned American way, it fairly accurately describes it) seizure. Each horizontal line represents a different part of the brain- all the points where the electrodes are stuck on his head.



The part where it increases is generally referred to as "spike-and-wave." Pretty descriptive, huh? Evan's seem to be higher spikes and also closer together, though these differences may have just been a result of the machinery having different settings. This is what Evan has going on about 6-15 times an hour. They last only a few seconds, but frustrating nonetheless.

One other thing Dr. R was a little concerned about was that the EEG on the right side had a slightly different shape than the left. We're hoping that the medication will address that, in addition to the absence seizures.

Here's another site with a picture of an EEG that also describes pretty accurately the symptoms we have been seeing in Evan. As we've said, the major seizures (which are/were complex partial seizures) are at least better under control, it's these shorter, absence ones that we're trying to knock out, along with any of the remaining long ones.

If you have Java enabled, this EEG is zoomable. Pretty cool. If not, it's still a good picture.

I'd be curious to see what his EEG would look like during one of my involuntary wrestling matches.