In other medical news...

Lily has always been, shall we say, special.  She was my easiest birth and baby, by leaps and bounds, but right about when she turned 10 months old, she had a slew of illnesses that completely changed her from the calm, peaceful, contented infant she had been into a volatile, strong-willed creature whose vocal chords knew no limit.

8 years later, she still continues to baffle me, though the complexities of her character make her easy to love.  She's smart, affectionate, creative, imaginative, friendly, adventurous and on and on.  I adore her and don't worry about her all that much, even if I sometimes feel that dealing with her is much like breaking a horse.

This past school year was a particularly difficult one for Lily.  She resisted our early-morning routine often enough that she ended up walking to school alone on more than one occasion instead of joining her sister and neighbor on their usual bike ride and she didn't thrive academically, as we'd expected.  In fact, she struggled to pass off even the most basic "rocket math" timed tests and failed to take voluntary (AR)tests on pretty simple books in spite of the fact that she was blazing through the Harry Potter series at home.  Her teacher expressed concern that Lily would often ask for instructions to be repeated when other students were beginning their work.  We often prayed for guidance in knowing how to deal with this difficult but talented child of ours.

Then, in March, we noticed that she would occasionally stop mid-sentence and utter unintelligible sounds for a few seconds before pulling out of it and resuming whatever she'd been saying before her trance-like episode.  This was particularly puzzling.  I hit the internet, searching for answers.  My most convincing hunch was ADD, since many of her behaviors(including what I thought was merely a vocal tic) mimicked those with ADD.  I even asked some friends, whose kids have the disorder to find out what approach to take in getting a diagnosis, and what techniques they've found to be effective in treating it.  I called her teacher to express my concerns.

One night, I was on the internet for an entirely different purpose and stumbled across a headline: "10 things often mistaken for ADHD".  I clicked on it.  I clicked through the different disorders, just skimming over the information and clicked through the page about "seizures", not even reading it.  But then something prompted me to go back.  I began to read through information on seizures and immediately knew that was what Lily was experiencing.

As far as I know, we have no family history of seizures, and my exposure to epilepsy is limited at best.  It had never, ever crossed my mind that Lily's episodes could be seizures - I mean, what first comes to mind when discussing epilepsy are grand mal seizures, involving a complete takeover of the mind and body into convulsive fits, right?  My preconceived notions might have set back Lily's diagnosis for years.  But my attention to the Spirit, which had prompted me to go back when I would otherwise have blazed through, gave us exactly what we needed to go forward and help Lily.  I am so grateful for that guidance.

So what do we do now?  We've met with a neurologist, had an EEG (I'll show pictures when I blog from my iPhone) and determined what type of medication is used to treat absence seizures, as they're called.  I'm a bit skeptical and maybe even a little bit scared of the medicine, but have confidence that the Lord will guide us to make the right decisions on Lily's behalf, just as he so lovingly guided me to find out what was wrong in the first place, against all odds.  We'll keep everyone posted on our journey.