Faith: MONDAY - JAN 10, 2011

DAY 7 MONDAY JANUARY 10, 2011

Well, today when Alannah woke up, I could see wires under the head wrap because she
had moved around so much in her sleep that she had worked some gauze up and off
the wrap. I freaked out a little bit, but true to experienced nurse form, no one
else freaked out. They just sent some people to re-wrap it....new headwrap pictures
to follow...

Bad night sleep again for Alannah, and of course, for the parents too. She was itchy,
itchy, and more itchy under the headwrap.....so she got a dose of Benadryl to help with
that. They informed us that it would probably make her sleepy, which we thought might
work out well since she hadn't been sleeping well. However, Alannah never does anything
as they predict, so instead of getting sleepy, she was up for 3 hours....all you can
do is laugh....so go ahead, laugh.

They decided to do some "mapping" today, which means that they stimulate certain
electrodes in her brain to determine exact placement of electrodes over the "motor"
areas of her brain. This is the area of her brain which controls the muscles
that move the left side of her body. So when they do this stimulation, it moves her
hand or facial muscles. They do this procedure to determine exact
location of motor areas of the brain, so that they don't remove or disturb this
part of the brain when they are removing the epileptic brain tissue. It went very
well, and Alannah cooperated pleasantly, although, she didn't like it too much.
She said, after they left, that it was weird....

The surgery has definately been canceled for tomorrow. She, as of today at 4pm, has
not had any seizures yet. They have to see at least 3-4 seizures before they can
have all the information they need for the most successful surgery outcomes. So we will
wait.....if she has any tonight or tomorrow morning, the surgery may be Wednesday....if not,
it may be Friday. And if all else fails, it may even be pushed to next week. We obviously
don't want to be here forever, but it is way more important that they have all the info they
need for the most successful outcomes.

Grandma and grandpa made their lunch run today....and brought Alannah one of her favorites:
McDonald's chicken nuggets. She ate them all! Uncle Ben and Aunt Mary also came today and
brought delicious dinner. They also got to experience Alannah's new water gun....which
just happens to be an old saline syringe. She had a good old time trying to soak every one's
face! That thing can shoot pretty far! ( see pics ) Aunt Denise and Uncle Rick came over
too, they did not get to escape the water gun either! Alannah also played some games with
her visitors and of course, watched some movies.

The doctors have now ordered that Alannah be "sleep-deprived", which means she is only allowed
to sleep from 12am-6am, no naps. They are doing this because sometimes, sleep deprivation
can cause seizures, and they are doing everything they can to bring the seizures on. Eric and I
were thrilled to hear that our already very short sleeping hours were going to be reduced
even further. Eric and I take "shifts" at night. One of us is always awake, watching her,
making sure that she doesn't yank off her headwrap or have a seizure that someone misses or
rolls over and konks her head on the bed rails. Eric brought a laptop for us to use and
we use our "awake shift" to blog, or watch movies, or check email, etc. Sometimes we are
exhausted at the "changing of the shift" so we whine and complain about something trivial
and give each other dirty looks.....then we're over it. And then we usually laugh about
it later....usually.

Nurse Darla let Alannah play nurse and "give her an IV" which was a lot of fun. They were
shooting "medicine" (aka saline water) into her IV.....which is of course how the whole water
gun thing started. This is just another example of how the nurses go out of their way
to make Alannah feel good and have fun.....they are wonderful! ( see pics )

I think that's all for today.....