Neurologist#5 and Keppra

For a couple of months now, we got a recommendation for a particular neurologist who was supposed to be excellent – this came from multiple sources. We had already seen four neurologists. Would this one be any different? We weren't sure but given that he came highly recommended from different sources, we thought, why not give it a try?

            So off we went to neurologist #5. The appointment lasted for over an hour; he was a very patient listener and really listened to everything we had to say – the best out of the five. After listening to all we had to say, however, there was no new message – he looked at me and said – why are you scared to try the keppra – I would do it. You should try it out. So ended our visit. I didn't go back not for anything else but the fact that we have really used the neurologist only for prescritption refills for a long time. Every time she thinks we haven't gone in a very long time and we need to pay our annual visit, she will call and ask us to make an appointment so that she can renew our prescription!!!

            The neurologist had also recommended that we see a particular nutritionist which we haven't yet done, again because we don't want to put him in hospital through a ketogenic diet and not everything works for every child.

            After much debating, my husband said that we should try the keppra – given that quite a few people had said that the drug was really good. This was one time for V that we both disagreed. I was too scared to give it – I had read on enough of my epilepsy newsgroups that if two drugs fail, all drugs will fail. So I told him if he wanted to try it, he could, I wasn't going to give it and be a part of it. So he gave V a very tiny portion of the pill. The next two days were a real disaster. V couldn't say a word – he would start talking and he would have one seizure, then another – he also had another type of seizure by this time – eyebrow twitching. It was horrendous to watch him. After the second day of watching him this way, we stopped it overnight and the twitching and other continuous seizures stopped. This was the end of our encounter with keppra.

            This was November 2005. Almost two years after his first seizure. When was this ever going to stop. Call it adjusting to the medication or the few changes in diet which we had introduced, V's head drops had got less intense and his grunt seizures had lessened in the time they carried on. He was growing up as well but the seizures hadn't yet stopped.