EEG= Extremely Exhausted Girls.

Our oldest daughter was scheduled for an EEG (see above image) yesterday. She has had to experience this test four times in the last seven years, but this time was a little more exciting than the others. Jaye has been seizure free for two years! Her neurologist needed to do this one last test to prepare to ween Jaye off of the medication she has been taking daily since she was five. 

The night before the procedure, Jaye could only sleep for four hours, because a big portion of the EEG is measuring brain waves as the patient is falling asleep. (Don't ask me why, I couldn't tell you.) But a sleep-deprived child also means sleep-deprived parents.  

I'm not a young party animal like I was in my twenties. In college, I stayed up until 2 or 4 in the morning almost every night and woke with the energy of a hyperactive chihuahua. Surprisingly, however, it ended up being a really fun night. After putting the other kids in bed, Barry, Jaye and I started our first movie. (The Secret of Dolphin Cove on Disney +. It was a fun enough movie to keep Jaye awake although the lack of a love story was disappointing for me.) Then the three of us sat on our bed and played Yahtzee until midnight. (For the 100+ board games we own, it is shocking how often we fall back on good ol' Yahtzee.) Then we started movie number two, Middle School, the Worst Years of My Life. 

It ended up being such a fun night that Barry and I both commented as we were getting ready for bed that we should do a night like that with each of our kids. I got up two more times with Hollie and at 6 A.M., Barry got all the kids up for school and dragged an exhausted Jaye out of bed. We filled the day with activities that didn't involve laying down so none of us would be tempted to fall asleep. Her appointment wasn't until 2:30 in the afternoon. 

The night before, a friend dropped off some hand-me-down clothes and we were sooooo excited to pull this shirt out of the bag. What a perfect shirt to wear to the doctor! 

                                      

Here's how the procedure goes: 

The technician has you lay down on a hospital bed and just stare at the ceiling while they attach 25 different wires (all those wires in the image on the left) to different parts of your head with sticky stuff. Then they wrap your head with bandages until you are part-mummy and have you lay down. Now that you are feeling "nice and relaxed", they put a strobe light a few feet from your face, turn off the lights, and flash it for five minutes on different settings to see if it will trigger a photosensitive seizure. (Jaye doesn't have that kind of epilepsy, thank goodness!) Then, they turn the lights back on and make you blow on a pinwheel as fast as you can for two minutes. Now that you're out of breath and overstimulated, they turn off the lights and leave the room so you can fall asleep. There's a little couch bed for parents to rest too. 

As soon as you drift into blissful sleep, they march right back in, flick the lights on and tell you it's all over. There's no nap. No grace period of rest. Just mild torture. Even I had been on the cusp of sleeping when they marched in, all smiles, ripped the electrodes off and booted us right out the door. 

It's a little messed up if you ask me. They should let the poor patient sleep. And poor Mom, dangit! 

 We were both zombies for the rest of the day. 

But this morning, reminded me and Barry that doing a late night up with Mom and Dad (although magical in the moment) is a TERRIBLE. TERRIBLE. Idea. There were tears. There was pleading. There was bribery. And eventually, there was acceptance that we needed to just let our exhausted child go back to bed and miss half a day of school.  

Hopefully, it is all a means to an end. I still can't comprehend the idea that we might be done with neurologists, with medications, with seizures!