Monday, December 22, 2008

EEG Day

This morning was Evan's EEG at Tucson Medical Center at 8am. According to the pre-op directions, we were supposed to keep Evan up until midnight and then get him up at 4am. The point was to make him sleep-deprived so the sedative would work better. Evan ended up faling asleep around 9:30pm Sunday night and there was no keeping him awake. We got him up at 4am, but he was still zonked out. He was awake by the time we headed to Tucson, so we figured that was good enough.

They used an oral sedative on him that tasted awful according to the nurse. Evan was not happy having the liquid force-fed to him (of course). It took about 15-20 minutes for the sedative to work. Evan became slightly combative as he started to go out (which is normal according to the nurse). After he was out, the EEG guy went to work on him, measuring his head for the placement of the electrodes. There were about 20 electrodes to fit on his small head. After marking the locations with a black sharpie (of all things), he used an abrasive lotion on the spots and then stuck the electrodes on. Evan stirred a little bit when he was putting the electrodes on, but stayed sleeping.

After doing all the long prep work, the test only ran about 20 minutes. Towards the end, they used a flashing light (sort of like a strobe light) which helped to wake him up and it tests something different with his brain...the technical term is "photic or stroboscopic stimulation". Luckily, the electrodes came off rather easy and we were out the door by about 10:30am.

We should get the results within a week (with the holiday and all).

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