3-17-04
Dear Family and Friends,
Tim is still in St. Joseph’s Hospital (7T, room 31). He looked good today and
tried weakly to respond to me a couple of times. He has been pretty out of it
from the drugs that they had to give him to stop his seizures.
As you’ve heard, Tim suddenly started having seizures Monday morning at Palm
Valley. I am pretty sure that they were grand mal seizures (tonic/clonic). Each
seizure lasted about two minutes. It was frightening and I just cried - after
all Tim has been through, now he gets to endure seizures on top of everything
else. After the third seizure (in less than an hour), he was transported to the
hospital. The big seizures stopped when Tim was given medication. But, he still
didn’t seem right. Finally, a neurologist looked at him and said that he was
having sub-clinical seizures. They gave him a powerful medication to break the
seizure and it seemed to do the trick.
Tim has had a CT scan - no change there. He was given an EEG - nothing alarming
or helpful from that test. He had an MRI late last night and I am still waiting
to hear what the results were. They are running some tests to make sure that he
doesn’t have an infection in his blood that could be contributing to his
seizures. Tim does have a UTI and he spiked a temperature at the hospital, so
they want to rule out a serious infection. Most likely, the seizures are from
his original brain injury. The neurologist said it isn’t all that uncommon for
seizures to start, even at this late date. The injury and resulting atrophy of
the brain produces a “focus” point for seizures to begin at. They will try some
medications and find the right combination to keep Tim’s seizures under control.
He has been checked over quite thoroughly and I saw some of his former doctors
and nurses. I asked the doctor today when Tim would be discharged and he said it
would be a few more days. Tim’s blood pressure is a little low, so they need to
get that under control before he leaves. Plus, I think they are still not 100%
sure what caused the seizures and are not letting him go until they know for
sure.
I’ll let you know when I hear more.
In His Grip (in the dark),
Carole