New Things with Samuel…
May 7, 2010 | Updates
Just a few random things I wanted to pass along about Samuel.
This past summer (yes, nearly a year ago), for 2 months, Samuel didn’t have any seizures - not one. I was thrilled thinking that they had mysteriously disappeared and hoping against hope that they would never return. But, a week before school started, the seizures came back.
I was completely boggled as to what could have caused them to return. We hadn’t changed food or meds or anything. The only thing I could figure was that he wasn’t in the sun as much as he had been the prior two months. So, I added 1500 IU’s of vitamin D3 to his daily diet and within a week, the seizures were GONE! Seriously gone.
I have since taken him off the vitamin D supplement twice for a few days each time and both times, the seizures have returned. In addition, after being on the supplement for 2 months, I had his blood drawn and his vitamin D levels checked and they were still just below the lowest acceptable range. So, for awhile, he’s getting 2500 IU’s a day until we get his levels where they should be and then we will just continue to give him a daily supplement of it because he clearly doesn’t get enough sun to get his daily dose of vitamin D. (We actually just had it checked the other day and he was on the high side of normal but only after bumping his dose up to 5000 IU’s a day for about 3 months. So, we’ve backed off a little and will keep checking periodically.)
But the seizures…we haven’t seen them since we started giving the supplement in September. Amazing that such a little thing could bring them under control. He is still on low doses of Keppra to help control them as well. But he has always been on that and we have always battled them. To say I am thrilled that they are gone is a massive understatement!
A prior post told about how Samuel has started laughing again, so I won’t touch on that much except to say that the return of his laughter came just after we began controlling his seizures with the vitamin D and just after he had a 6 month bout with “laughing seizures” or seizures that actually caused him to laugh. At the same time, he has been doing much better in school. I think the seizures were probably slowing him down a bit, but maybe also may have helped to bring his laugh back. I don’t know that we’ll ever know.
And last of all, Samuel can now recognize our house. Well, maybe he always could, but now he can laugh when he sees our house and does so every single time we pull into the driveway. Actually, he has gotten to the point that he recognizes where we are about a mile from home. So, I guess now I know that he knows where our house is. Either way, it’s a pretty cool thing to know.
That’s the short of things for now.
Love,
The Jewkes
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