EPILEPSY...Its more common than you think, but this young child has a form of epilepsy thought to be as rare as only 150-200 people on earth. ___________ Leslie Henkel wasn’t too concerned at first. It just seemed that her baby girl, Ann, had taken a very long nap. But the child fell asleep again during a play date and appeared to be lethargic. After she fell asleep while eating lunch, Henkel called the doctor and took her daughter to the hospital emergency department, where an ear infection was diagnosed. Then, just before the family was about to head home, Ann had a seizure: Her eyes popped open, staring. Several tests later seemed to indicate that she had suffered febrile seizures, convulsions brought on by a fever in infants or small children, according to the National Institutes of Health. The next day, though, Ann had a second seizure and then four more after her parents returned to the hospital. The Henkels, of Coal Valley, were referred to specialists and given medications to control the seizures. Three months went by until Ann suffered four seizures in one day. It was noticed that the seizures seemed to occur especially when the baby was sick, often with an ear infection, her mother said. Then, in one three-day span during August 2012, Ann had 30 seizures. Those, too, were tied to an infection. Finally, in January of this year, specialists at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics in Iowa City diagnosed the little girl with a rare form of epilepsy: It is called pcdh19 female epilepsy, named for the gene that causes the neurological condition. “There’s only 150-200 people in the world with this,” Henkel said. ARTICLE: epilepsyu/blog/epilepsy-common-many-think/
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 15:56:21 +0000
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