Tuesday, April 17, 2012

EEG

We recently took Gracie to Akron Children's hospital for an EEG.  Since before Gracie was one she has done this thing with her hands and mouth when she gets excited.  Our doctor has always said it would be something she would grow out of.  When people get nervous they may twirl their hair, talk really fast, sweat, and even stutter.  Interesting enough this is what they are relating Gracies excited thing too.  We wanted to be sure that is all it was so we decided it would be best to have some test done, I would rather be safe than sorry.  One of the tests she had done was the EEG which was a long morning.  First, to understand this you need to know my daughter requires sleep to function and to be a happy girl.  She likes long naps, about 4 hours and then goes down around 8:30 and sleeps to 7:30 or 8.

The first rule before the test is that Gracie must stay up 3 hours past her bed time.
We then must wake her by 6am but in our case we had to do 5:30am so we could leave by 6 to be there by 6:30am for our appointment.
Before we could leave Gracie's hair had to be washed because it had to be oil free, this did not go well.
Then after that traumatic experience we got Gracie in the car and I headed to Akron.
Once there they had to put these 25 sensors all over her head.  Each spot had to be cleaned, stuck down with glue then a strip of paper went over each censure and was glued on, that was then dried with some stuff that stunk so bad, I had to hold gracie down.  This little girl was much stronger then I knew.  I practically had to lay my top half on her to hold her down so the lady could put each one on, Terrible!  Once they were finally on they ran all sorts of test, that I would have been annoyed with.  Once the basic tests were all completed I then had to tell gracie to lay down and go to sleep, seriously I thought that will never happen.  She laid down, I covered her up, and held her hand.  I just prayed, for what seemed to be an hour, for her to just go to sleep.  Once she was finally a sleep they let her sleep for about 10 minutes then told me to wake her, again, Seriously!  Poor thing, I woke her up and she was not happy.  She was so tired and she had to be fully awake.  At that point I was so thankful that I brought her a new toy, which was also required to help her do her "excited thing".  This made miss gracie very happy.  Next step was to pray she would do her excited thing while they were scanning her.  Finally she did but not for very long but enough for them to get what they needed.
Once all test were completed each sensor had to be removed with nail polish remover, she still has some spots in her hair that I have to remove.
After all was said and done we gone in our car at 9:30.  I never thought it would take that long but it did and it was finally all over.  Hours of praying is the only way we got through it and I am so thankful it is over.
here is our little lady during the test
this is the happiest of the pictures.

1 comment:

The Burgess family said...

oh wow! I hope the tests are all clear? we've done tests for our older 2 girls, Winter had to be put under for an MRI once and that was sad, and Pearl has had VCUGs for her kidneys and those were terrible! I know what you mean about how strong a little girl can be! Glad this experience is over for you and I hope Gracie is A-ok!