The Friday after the MRI Alex was given the all clear to come home. We had a referral in the works for Neurology and were told we would be informed of our appointment time very shortly. We kept an eye on him obviously, but no more episodes occurred and the gastro symptoms went as well. A week or so later we had a letter in the post telling us Alex had an appointment for an EEG on August 14th.
Phil went in a little late to work and dropped Jenny to kindy and I took Alex off to the WCH. We hadn’t a long wait once we checked in at the Neurology clinic and were soon called by a very nice doctor – Dr Alex :). The process of getting an EEG isn’t the worst thing we have ever had to put Alex through, but since it involved someone touching his head I was expecting some resistance from him.
First Dr Alex had to draw marks on Alex’s head with a special pencil to mark out the placement of the electrodes, unfortunately this meant we had to remove Alex’s hearing aid headband, so communication got just that bit harder. Alex was pretty good through this bit – mainly because the pencil was in his favourite colour – red!
Then Dr Alex placed the electrodes. The end which goes on your head is cone shaped with a hole at the top, about half the size of your little fingernail, and to attach it to your head the little bowl is filled with industrial strength hair wax and then pressed very firmly to your head until a little bit of wax pokes out of the top.
It took a great deal of fast talking and some distractions in the form of adding up puzzles to stop Alex from pulling them off as soon as they were placed! Once they were all on he was quite calm about the whole thing however, and we settled down to read a braille book I had brought with us.
The test itself only lasted around 20 minutes and Alex was then able to help pull the electrodes off, the hair wax didn’t come out easily so we ended up getting the worst of it off and deciding to leave the rest for bathtime! After that it was off to the cafe for some milk and a chocolate frog, and then back home.
We weren’t given a time for a follow up appointment to review the results, again, we would be sent a letter, but the results would be in the system in a few days, so at Alex’s next oncology review on the 21st, the doctor seeing us would be able to access them and let us know.
This proved to be a fortuitous arrangement as about a week later we recieved a letter from the Neurology department which ran as follows.
“Our medical staff have assessed your referral and based on the information provided to us, we are unable to allocate an appointment at this time.
Alexander wil be placed on the Neurology clinic waiting list. The anticipated waiting time due to current demand is likely to be greater than 6 months”
It does you good to laugh doesn’t it 🙂
Still, there have been no more episodes, Alex is back to his usual self and is even putting on some weight! So (touch wood) everything is back to normal, or at least as normal as it gets around here 🙂
