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First MRI is 2 months away
Mon, 02/12/2018 - 01:55My 3 year old daughter has had 3 unprovoked, partial seizures. She had an EEG that showed epileptiform discharges coming from the temporal lobe. She has been put on trileptal twice daily and neurologist ordered an MRI that can't be done for 2 months. Having issues with MRI availability and scheduling. However, I feel this is a very long wait! Any resources, reassurance would help.
Comments
An MRI may help to pinpoint
Submitted by birdman on Mon, 2018-02-12 - 19:48
An MRI may help to pinpoint the cause of the seizures. If there is structural damage an MRI will show this as the likely cause of seizures. But I'm sorry to say that I think there often is no noticeable structural damage showing why the seizures are erupting. Of course it would be wonderful to get this answer sooner. I would encourage you to keep doing your research on epilepsy symptoms, causes, and treatment. Keep up your good record-keeping on the seizures, as well as the effects of medications your daughter takes. A good doctor will use this information toward treatment just as much as (maybe more than) the EEG and MRI results.
Relax in a lot of cases the
Submitted by just_joe on Tue, 2018-02-13 - 18:22
Relax in a lot of cases the MRI will come back normal. The neurologist know where in her brain the seizure activity is coming from. What the MRI will show is anything that is different in or on her brain. For me I had abnormalities aka epileptiform coming from the left lobes of my brain. They found scar tissue in those areas of my brain. So the cause of my epilepsy is known. For many people there is no known cause. Oh and your wait is very short since I had 20-25 different EEG's that all came back normal. It was the EEG that was done in a battery of tests about 1 1/2 years after I have my grand mal that showed the epileptiform.
I know this feels stressful
Submitted by Amy Jo on Mon, 2018-02-12 - 11:36
I know this feels stressful but that doesn’t make it an emergency where one is prioritized over others.The MRI for epilepsy protocol is at least an hour (ok, been a while). And they usually need to be coordinated for when anesthesiology is available, depending on age of child.When our youngest first had an MRI the children’s hospital only had one MRI. Scheduling was farther out. Now we have at least two and scheduling is only slightly better because more patients are being scheduled. This by no means is the longest waiting we’ve done. It was four months to get a five day EEG and that was only because our doc opened up one of his slots, would have been over five months to get to when the scheduling would schedule more appts otherwise, no idea when the actual appt would have been. Epilepsy diagnosis and treatment is on a different time scale than more immediate situations.