Our winter wonderland…
February 11, 2008 | Updates
We haven’t had this much snow in years! In fact, everytime I drive by the local high school, there are tractors there loading snow into dump trucks to be carried off to who knows where, but hopefully, far away from my house because when that snow melts, it’s going to make for A LOT of water! Of course, some of us enjoy it more than others. And one of my boys is a real artist, no matter what he has to work with (see icicle sculpture below)!
Today we made a trip to Salt Lake to have Samuel’s baclofen pump reduced. He is now at 135 micrograms per day. We will change the medication in his pump to a less concentrated one next month so we can continue with our decreases because at the concentration he has now, we can’t go lower than 94 micrograms per day. AND, for the first time ever, our rehab doctor agreed that it appears that he will be able to have the pump removed at some point. There are no guarantees that the baclofen isn’t helping him anymore, but I’m hoping it’s not. Sounds funny, but it would be great to get that pump out of him. Just one less thing to worry about.
On our way to Salt Lake, I decided it wouldn’t hurt Samuel to just look out the window instead of watching a movie on the DVD player. (Mostly, I just wanted to listen to music instead of a kid show I’d heard a thousand times.) Samuel was content for about an hour doing so. I can see him very clearly in my rear view mirror and probably check him every 10 seconds (mother’s porogative!) A new song came on the radio that I recognized, but didn’t know right away. As I looked in the mirror, I saw that Samuel was all kinds of smiles. And then I realized the song on the radio was the theme song to the movie Shrek. He smiled through the whole thing! It was amazing to me that he recognized the song all on his own!
The only bad news today is that I’m an idiot. No really, I am. As I was measuring up Samuel’s Keppra (seizure med) tonight, I happened to glance at the words on the bottle and noticed it said Neurontin. I brushed it off quickly thinking that must be the generic name for Keppra. But then I quickly realized I had never heard a generic name for Keppra before and Neurontin sounded so familiar…and CRAP! That’s when it hit me. I was giving him Neurontin - NOT Keppra. How in the heck? I had no idea. He hadn’t taken Neurontin for months and months now! How did I do that?! And how long had I been doing that for?! The bottle was nearly empty! Aaaaauuuuurrrrggggghhhhh!
Seizure meds are nothing to mess with. If you start too quickly on them, you can cause seizures. If you stop too quickly, you can cause seizures. If you miss a dose, you can cause seizures. If you overdose, you can cause seizures. Basically, if you don’t give them just right, instead of helping the seizures, you will make them worse. And often times - MUCH worse!
So, here’s the best I can figure it. I like to keep some of his Keppra in the car for emergencies. But I have to rotate that medication because it doesn’t stay good forever. So, somehow between cleaning out his medication drawer and his emergency pack in December, I got ahold of an old bottle of Neurontin. But the Keppra and Neurontin bottles look exactly alike. So I either mixed them together or mixed them up. Either way, somewhere around the end of the year, I started giving Samuel Neurontin instead of Keppra. And somehow when I ordered a refill, I had the Neurontin bottle in my hand and ordered that. (I just read the prescription number to the pharmacist.) And that bottle is now nearly gone. So, he has not had any Keppra for at least a month! Jeez! Neurontin is not meant to be a seizure med on its own. It is only said to work when it is given in conjunction with other seizure meds. Man, oh, man, I’m counting my blessings that we didn’t have a grand mal seizure because of this. HOW in the world did I make such a HUGE mistake?!
So, I’ll be calling the neurologist in the morning to see what he suggests now. I guess this explains the increase in seizures since the first of the year. I guess in the end, all is well that ends well. And somewhere, there must be a silver lining. But, honestly, I’m just kicking myself for assuming that just because two bottles looked alike, they contained the same thing. I have GOT to be more careful!
Well, that’s it for now. Hope you’re either in a nice, sunny place or at least less burried than we are! We need the water, but the runoff could be bad if it melts too fast. Let’s hope for all good things (with the snow, my brain and poor little Samuel’s seizures)!
Love,
The Jewkes
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February 19th, 2008 at 7:00 pm, Tiffany Says:
Sending you warm, warm breezes and sunny thoughts…although I really loved the snow pictures! Thanks for sharing about the Keppra/Neurontin debacle…sometimes I worry that I am the only who does things like! I am so thankful that you didn’t have any major events.
Blessings,
Tiffany