One year ago today....

I was standing in the kitchen measuring out ingredients for homemade pizza. It was opening day for Spiderman 3 and by some stroke of luck Abe and Zane were able to get tickets and see an afternoon showing of it. I had already calculated when the movie would be over and that they would be home in time for dinner. That's why I was surprised to see Abe's name and number come up on the caller ID when the phone rang. I wondered "did Zane not sit through the entire movie?". I didn't have to wonder for long as I listened to Abe's voice on the other end. It went something like this... "Zane's alright now, but he had a seizure. We are getting ready to leave in the ambulance now."

I can't even describe what happened in my mind at that moment. It was all over the place and going a mile a minute. I managed to absorb the few details Abe could give me but then he had to hang up and I was to meet them at the hospital. Fortunately the Morris family was able to come over and stay with Brody, who was about 3 weeks old. I think he was asleep during all of this but honestly he could have been hanging from the ceiling fan and I probably wouldn't remember. I'm sad to say but from that moment until he was about 7 months old his life seems like a blur to me.

I arrived at the hospital which lucky for us is only about 2 miles from home, still feeling like I'm having an out-of-body experience. I am shown to Zane's room and to see his little body laying on the full size hospital bed was very daunting. He had an IV in his arm and a pulse monitor on his finger but as his Mom it looked a thousand times worse than that. Of course seeing Abe's face was not very comforting either. He looked as if he had seen a ghost or 10. Zane had fallen asleep in the ambulance but was awake now. He kept asking to go home. The doctors ran a CT scan and EKG on Zane before he was released. Everything came back normal. We returned home with little to go on.

By that evening Zane was acting 100% normal and we were hoping it was all an isolated incident. The seizure had occurred during the climax of the movie and we thought maybe the flashing lights had triggered it. Fortunately Abe was holding Zane in his lap when it happened. I started doing some research online which was informative but scary at the same time. It seemed the possibilities were endless and none of it very pleasant.

Fast forward exactly one week. I was working on dinner, Abe was at the kitchen sink, I have no idea what Brody was doing, Zane had just been watching some TV but came into the kitchen to help me. As he was walking away from me he fell face first on the tile floor and had a second seizure. It was at that moment I knew this was something serious. I probably looked as if I had seen a ghost or 10. It wasn't because this was my first time seeing Zane seize it was more about the fact that this was now not an isolated incident. Obviously it wasn't photosensitive epilepsy since he was just talking and walking out of the kitchen. The seizure lasted a few minutes and we took him back to the ER. They diagnosed an ear infection and pharyngitis but still no clue what was causing the seizures.

Fast forward about 6 months. By now Zane had experienced several types of seizures and easily had hundreds of them. He was under the care of Dr. Crisp in Temple and had tried anti-seizure meds to no avail. He was about 3 months into the Ketogenic Diet and had seen little success with it. Yes, he had a couple stretches of several days without any seizures but everytime he had another seizure it felt like we were starting all over again.

November 17th, 2007 was Zane's last seizure. If I remember correctly it happened at the table during breakfast. It was a drop seizure and he banged his head on the table. We didn't know it would be his last one but about 3 weeks later we started to get comfortable with the idea that the diet was finally working for him. It has continued to work for him. He is in the process of weaning off the anti-seizure med he has been on since prior to starting the diet. Things are looking good that in about 4 weeks he will be medication and seizure free. In another year and a half I hope to say he is off the diet and medication and seizure free. I'm actually hoping that he will be off the diet in time for his 6th birthday (Oct, 2009) so he can have cake after having two birthdays without it.

I can't believe a year has gone by. So much has happened. Things got so terribly bad but have now been so awesomely good. I will never forget what I was doing on May 4th, 2007. I will never forget the significance of November 17th, 2007. I will never underestimate the power of food. And I will never be able to adequately thank our dear family and friends for the unlimited support they have shown towards not only Zane but our entire family during this ordeal.

I leave you with one of our favorite photos of Zane related to this topic. It was taken in October after a drop seizure at school. As heartbreaking as it is to see the cut on his face, he is still as beautiful as ever. And the spiderman suit says so much about his personality.