To Utah We Go
As you are most likely aware, Alayna was diagnosed with Epilepsy last year. We have learned to be aware, manage what comes, and keep a closer eye on her behavior and moods. Some days we do really good and the day goes by without incident but other days her emotions are all over the place and her rationalizations don't make sense for the situations which puts us all on edge. She was put on a medication that has side effects but is working well. We have been working with a doctor at Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City who takes our concerns seriously and helps us come up with the best solution for our situation. We have been trying to get a sleep study done for months but because of the Covid issue it was pushed off a bit. We drove down on July 5th for her overnight sleep study/EEG. She seemed pretty good with it until we were at the hospital and the technician was going over what they had to do. The technician was great and asked her lots of questions to get her mind off what was happening. They got on the topic of her favorite animals and she told him about liking pandas. He was able to find her a little plush panda to sleep with. She was so scared and unsure about what was happening and the panda really helped. She was so tired she slept pretty well and fell asleep quickly.
The next morning she was ready to be done. We woke up and broke out of the hospital by 6:30 a.m. She was all smiles once that testing was over. We made it back to the hotel where the rest of the family was staying and she crashed and slept lots more.
We then took everyone to The Hogle Zoo! Alayna wanted to see a panda and Kaytlin wanted to see giraffe's. There weren't very many people there and the animals were very active.
The Polar Bear was probably everyone's favorite at the end of the day. We spent the majority of our time at the zoo hanging out with this guy. He was very interactive with the kids and definitely was not camera shy.
All Alayna wanted to see was a panda however the only panda's they had were the red panda's. She was excited to even see those.
We took a little train ride before leaving the zoo. It was a fun day visiting the zoo.
Alayna spent the majority of the day sleeping to make up for the loss of sleep through the night. We got her test results back yesterday. Her brain lobes have a lot less going on now that she has been on meds from her first eeg test. The medication is working and helping so there were no changes made to her dosage. She has slight obstructive sleep apnea that the doctors told us was due to her enlarged tonsils and adenoids which we are seeing an ENT for next week. Her doctor is moving so we are currently checking into our options for a different doctor. We are finding our footing with our new normal. We hope and pray every single day that she will eventually grow out of having epilepsy however we are optimistic if she doesn't she can live a fairly normal life on the path we are currently on. Thank you all for the love and support you have shown us.
