My wife took Anthony to see a neurologist today as recommended by the doctor at the emergency room last week.  She called worriedly to ask if I could somehow leave work--I ended up finishing at home--to join her at the doctor's office because Anthony was showing signs of getting violent.  Thankfully, we didn't have an incident there.

The doctor told us, somewhat differently from what we heard at the emergency room, that the chance of having a second seizure is in fact 50% within the next six months for people in general, and higher than that for those with autism.  If Anthony makes it past six months without one, the likelihood for another episode goes down significantly.  We were grateful to have clarification about that, as well as information about what to do in general if it happens again.  We will also be getting an emergency nasal spray prescription that can stop a seizure if it goes excessively long--we learned that a seizure that lasts five minutes, for instance, is just as likely to continue for ten, and clearly intervention would then be in order if possible.

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As I have mentioned before, we are at a loss about what to do with Anthony wetting himself.  He has completely regressed to not even considering going to the bathroom on his own before doing so.  Maddeningly, he will come out to us or go into the bathroom immediately *after* he has done it, and it is apparent that he knows we won't be happy with him.  We don't know what to think.  It's almost as though the blessing we felt of him suddenly learning to go on his own at five years of age--after nothing we tried worked--has just as suddenly been revoked.

This impacts us not only in time lost due to dealing with him once, twice, and even thrice a day with the washing, changing, cleaning, et cetera, but there is an additional challenge for us, and part of it is almost amusing: we have to scramble to find pants or shorts for him to wear because things are constantly being soiled and waiting to be washed, and I realized today that the stack of plastic bags we get from stores for our garbage has been depleted because we keep using them for Anthony's wet clothes.  We will have to stop being ecologically friendly and ask for more plastic rather than paper bags for the time being, I guess.

I had been thinking I needed to follow up on the last post--we ultimately do have to find another service provider--as well as write about Anthony continuing to defy all attempts to stop his urinating problems, but today we experienced something new: he had a seizure.

As today was a holiday, I was off work.  And as fate would have it, I did not sleep well last night, so I had not yet gone outside to work in the garden as I had planned.  My wife and younger son were out, so only my daughter was with me when Anthony began making a commotion in his bedroom indicating something was seriously wrong.  My daughter's own initial reaction was that she was hearing an earthquake, but she quickly realized it was only in Anthony's room.  I rushed in to find him convulsing on the floor with a heavier chair on top of him, and called my daughter in to help me get the chair off him.  In the same small area, he has a table where he sits to work on puzzles; we moved that away as well and tried to sit him up as he was beginning to turn blue.  I realized the gravity of the situation, and both my daughter and I had brief thoughts that the unthinkable might be happening before our eyes.  Thankfully, I did manage to get him up and breathing again.  But Anthony is heavy, and trying to lift a limp body of that size is not an easy task.

My daughter ran to the computer to search on what to do when someone is having a seizure, and told me to turn him on his side and cushion his head.  We did that, but he was on the floor and it didn't look very comfortable, in addition to the fact that he was also lying on scattered puzzle pieces, so I tried to lift him without success to get him on his bed.  My daughter said a person who has just had a seizure will also be very groggy, and that was indeed the case with Anthony, but we did manage to get him to climb onto his bed, after which he rested nicely for about three hours.

Later, after some discussion and considering advice from others, my wife and I took Anthony to an urgent care section of the hospital, where they determined it would be best to have him go to the emergency room to run some tests.  The doctor said the results showed nothing out of the ordinary and, more importantly, told us that of those who ever experience a seizure in their lifetimes, 80% will never experience another.

On a personal note, hearing that figure was a tremendous relief to me.  For a few hours today, I was revisiting the struggles I had years ago to separate lack of control with regard to Anthony's condition from other areas, including professional, of my life.  I am grateful to likely not have yet more stress to combat.

We learned at the hospital, by the way, that Anthony weighs 215 pounds.  We now have a renewed determination to get him to lose weight, just in case this ever happens again.