Wednesday, July 20, 2011

While my roast chicken rests...

... and before I head out for girls' night, I thought I'd squeeze in a quick post-doctor visit post.

I can't tell you how happy I am right now. For once a doctor didn't brush off my concerns and is interested in looking into them. Elizabeth has 2 different behaviors and has had 2 different events that all concerned me. I thought they were all related, and it seems not. The behaviors she has been doing (a head turn/eye twitch combo that she did from last September until the end of May, and a fairly new upper body shimmy) are tics. If you don't know what a tic is, it is basically an uncontrollable urge (she calls it an itch) to move a body part, and upon moving that body part you feel instant relief of that itchy feeling. When there is a vocal component you can be looking at Tourette's Syndrome, but Elizabeth doesn't have a vocal component. What she does have is something I can talk to her Kindergarten teacher about this fall. A kid who keeps wiggling is a "bad" kid, a kid who sees a neurologist for tics gets a Tic Break in class. Big difference in perception when the proper label is applied. As far as events goes, she fainted in preschool towards the end of the year, and based on the description of that incident, the doctor feels it was just a fainting episode. The event that concerns him is a spell she had a few days later at preschool in which she was conscious but unresponsive for a period of time and then suddenly snapped out it of with no memory that it had happened and was very tired afterwards. For that she's getting an EEG to see if it was a "partial-complex seizure". Just to rule out anything unexpected or missed by the EEG she's also having an MRI. I am so thrilled that we are going to either rule out some of the options I've worried about or know what we're dealing with (other than the tics) that I could do a happy dance.

Thanks for the good thoughts!

1 comment:

Sprite's Keeper said...

Yay for answers!
My cousin has non-verbal Tourette's which can be controlled with medication. At least, I think he still takes it. I'm not even sure anymore since he never talks about it these days! But this is great for Elizabeth that you can now put a name and an understanding to those movements which had you confused.
Big hugs for her!