The right side of her face was twitching
vigorously and she could not speak. They
have given her another antiseizure
medication and a sedative. She finally stopped
twitching but is semiconscious and cannot speak.
I reached Mimi who went to the apartment to get
toothbrush and so forth --- unnecessary but it
was better if she felt she was doing something.
But she managed to block the toilet in a way
that even I could fix but she called a plumber
and is still awaiting his arrival. It's worth
price.
At the moment they are hooking B up to an EKG
machine and I have been ejected from her room
for two hours. Fortunately, I have discovered
a patients' recreation room with a computer.
(My previous message was sent with the help of
a helpful nurse who violated the rules.)
After a couple of hours in the ER, B was moved to the
neuro-observation ward where she saw several young
staff members of the neuro-oncology group that I
believe is under Omuro. They were on top of things,
though there were some minor matters that I was
troubled about. (These little things loom large in
that kind of situation.) Dr. Gutin visited her on his
rounds. I had called Dr. Chan's office to leave word
about what was going on but it was considered that
today's situation did not concern him directly. We'll
have to make a new appointment when things clear
up with post stroke trauma.
B's dose of keppra was doubled and another anti-
seizure medication was tossed in. She did a lot
of sleeping during the day. The medics do not
understand the process well and do not even seem
to try to. But what I could imagine from what they
were telling me is that neurons start to produce
action potentials synchronously and, if there are
enough of them involved, a macroscopic part of
the body goes into an oscillatory mode. That
feature of the process, the observable seizure,
has now ceased in Barbara's case. But there are
still some residual high frequency electric modes
with amplitudes below the threshold for an action
potential, so there is no visible seizure. But as
long as those modes are there, there is still a risk
that they can exceed criticality. So they have kept
her there to see what can be done about it.
An article on seizures from The American Brain Tumor Association
