Utah Day Trip

We decided to do a quick day trip to Utah on Dec 23rd. Our first stop was to see Aunt Kerstin, Uncle Alex, and Connor. Hailey and Robert have been talking about Connor a lot. They love having a cousin close by.

Kerstin and Alex recently went on a cruise for their one year anniversary. We got to see the pictures and heard about their fun adventure. I hope in 10 years from now we'll be able to do something like that.

Then we did a little Christmas gift exchange.

I made beanbags for Connor.

I also made him a batman cape since he really likes superheros.

Here's the inside of the cape.

For Kerstin and Alex, we gave them a few Christmas books to add to their advent book collection. They gave us a fun lobster/crab eating kit so we can have a special but inexpensive date at home. I've never tried crab or lobster before so I'm excited to try it out.

After we saw Kerstin, we went to visit Rachel, an old friend of Nate's, in Orem. She has 3 young kids which Hailey and Robert had fun playing with. We were much later at getting to our different visits then we planned on, so Rachel offered and made us dinner. While that was getting ready, Hannah was just playing with a toy on the floor when I saw her jerk. It's been a while since she has done convulses before a seizure. I called to Nate to make him aware of what was going to happen and before anyone could do anything, Hannah was in a grand mal seizure. It lasted 2-3 minutes, which is the second longest one up until this date. I thought we were definitely done with grand mal seizures, so saying her like this was very difficult. Also I don't like them happening in front of other people because it's such a hard thing to watch. After she came out of it, she didn't peacefully fall asleep like she usually does. Instead she started screaming uncontrollably. Soon, Nathan was able to rock her to sleep and she had maybe a 30 minute nap.  After her little nap, she was still hysterical.  I wish I had my oils with me to better help her. Rachel had some massaging oil with lavender in it, and Hannah calmed down a little after we put it on her.  We soon left to go to Gramma Cherie's house.

I think the seizure happened because Hannah didn't get good naps in and was out of her normal routine. After this seizure, we increased her medicine to .5ml in the morning and 1.0ml at night.  I'm not sure what has caused this change in frequency of her seizures since she was doing so well, 4 months, on a lower dosage of Keppra. Unfortunately, the only way to understand more and have a good pattern is for Hannah to have more seizures.  I do wonder if in generally winter time lowers her seizure thresh hold making happen more.

We got to Cherie's house around 9:00pm to drop off Christmas presents. We seriously considered whether we should continue home or not. Luckily, common sense hit us and we stayed over night. I find Hannah's seizures very draining for me to handle plus I've been driving all day. Hannah and Hailey shared a twin mattress on the floor while Robert slept on the couch. We had a nice visit with mom and Stan in the morning, then left for home. I still had a lot to get ready before Christmas came and my time was running out. Our first stop was to get Christmas breakfast and dinner food.  Luckily Hannah didn't have another seizure that day even though her schedule was still abnormal.