Tag

medications

Jun 19
1

On the A&E during lockdown visit

By | #teammikaere | No Comments

The thing with isolating is that safety stops at your front door. Inside: safe. Everything else: unsafe. We’ve been living that tenet for what feels like forever (funny how long 4+ months can feel).

But about a couple of months in, Mikaere started having seizures. Not just one or two, but many. The kind where it knocks him out, and as he’s waking up he has another. He was having very little awake time, losing skills and honestly, they were the kind of horrific seizures where between having the seizure and his brain shutting down, he’d literally scream before becoming unconscious. Melt your heart, panic when your heard it type scream (can I just say now I loathe NKH to the very depths of all that I am capable of feeling). We ended up sedating him, several times. We haven’t had to do that in almost a year.

The other concern was his heart rate. Usually when sleeping his heart rate is 90 or under. Fairly typical, as far as heart rates go. But when I came on shift after The Day of Awful Seizures, I watched as his heart rate went up and down, up and down while he slept. But by morning his heart rate was over 160bpm, despite him still being asleep.

His heart when he’s active and awake and happy is somewhere between 120 and 140. 160+ when sleeping with seizures indicated something was Wrong. Capital W.

Obviously being in isolation trying to figure out what to do adds complexity. Do we go into the hospital and get a review? Do we leave the safety of our flat, and take him into the A&E to get checked out?

Let’s be clear. At this point, we were mid peak. Thousands of people were dying a day. Four times that were testing positive daily. Outside our door seemed a dangerous place, and we were deeply distrustful of everyone. They could be asymptotic, they could share it and we could be facing something else. The risk felt huge.

Trying to figure out logically what was going on, I went through the list of the possible causes in my head:

Had he pooped in the last day, was he constipated?
Had he gained weight? Was his meds dosages off?
Has any of the meds changed brands/formula?
Had one of his meds oxidised and become unusable?
Was his glycine levels too high?
Or were they too low? Did he have Sodium Benzoate toxicity?
Did he have a fever, was he too hot?
Was he in pain?
Was he ill? Did he have an infection?
Was it a full moon, were the planets out of alignment (kidding, mostly. Sometimes it feels like there’s no rhyme or reason to these episodes despite me bending over backwards to figure it out)

A lot of those required blood tests and swabs to eliminate. After some in depth conversation with our CCN (community care nurse) we weighed up the risk. She called down to paeds A&E to assess the risk with what kind of patients they had on the floor and we talked to our neurodisability consult. And then we made the decision to go in. The truth is, with a heart rate that high, with having to sedate him for the first time in a long time and with an abnormally high number of seizures, he should be seen and reviewed. Just in case.

So we went. We assembled enough supplies for the day and for the first time since March, we all left the flat. Mikaere hadn’t really woken since the day before yesterday. He’d been having seizure after seizure. (I hate NKH. I hate it I hate it I hate it).

It was less risk for us to drive than take an ambulance, so that’s what we did. We faced an issue at the door, as only one parent is allowed to accompany a child at a time. We got around that later, by coming in separately to do a handover.

The paediatric waiting room was empty. The staff were careful to stay well back, and had gloves and masks. We were shown to a private triage room immediately. Sam and I were both able to stay through triage while we made a plan. Bloods, swabs and observation while we waited to see what his heart rate did.

We were eventually moved through to majors, and Sam left. I struggled. Sleep deprivation is a real thing, and I’d already missed the lunchtime nap that gets me through the day. Still, they did bloods and the swabs, and took away a urine sample. His heart rate came down, just a few beats a time. Mikaere was still sleeping, bar the seizures.

I also had a minor argument with the reg while he was taking bloods. Mikaere is hard to cannulate and never gets a cannula in on one go. He ends up with multiple bruises and scabs and it’s always awful.

The cannula they used to collect the blood wouldn’t flush (it never ever does). The reg wanted to insert a new cannula against the possibility he needed to be admitted. I argued that he may be causing my baby pain unnecessarily, that he might not be admitted and might not need the cannula. Also, that the emergency medication they’d administer was rectal paraldehyde and wouldn’t be going through a stupid cannula anyway. I insisted they stop. If he needed one later they could try later. It turned out I was right and saved my baby a tiny speck of unnecessary pain and suffering. It’s not often I can do that, so I’ll take it where I can.

While we waited, I convinced Mikaere to wake long enough poop, which was good. He wasn’t hot, not temp. He hadn’t gained any weight that would make his dosages change. We gave him a dose of calpol, just in case he *was* in pain. I was crossing off possible causes in my head. Watching as his heart rate came down a bit more.

And we settled in to wait for the blood results, my eyes constantly flicked between the sat monitor and Mikaere as we waited between seizures. Hours and hours later, the bloods came back clear. No infection (I’d hope so, we’d been in isolation for what felt like ever). Sodium, calcium, potassium all in normal range, so no indication of Sodium Benzoate toxicity. Glycine levels would come back in a week or so. Carnatine looked fine. Liver function fine.

Mikaere woke up enough to play with some toys shared (and disinfected) by the units play therapist. His heart rate was nearly in normal range, considering he was awake.

The consultant came down to have a chat with me. Essentially, he wanted Mikaere to be admitted on the ward for observation. Because we’d already given two doses of buccal midazolam, he’d hit his max 24hr quota. If Mikaere needed more rescue medication because of seizures, the next medication was rectal paraldehyde, as laid out in his seizure care plan.

The problem is that it’s not always easy to get on short notice. We didn’t have any at home (our stash expired, and it had been so long since we’d needed to use it). They had some on the ward, but wouldn’t be able to get any from the outpatient clinic.

If we left we’d be taking a risk. If he was admitted to the ward, we’d be taking a different risk.

We talked it out. Essentially I decided that between solo parenting for the entire night on the ward with sleep deprivation, Mikaere’s seizures decreasing and his heart coming down, and that we’re an 8 minute blue light from the hospital, we should go home.

The consultant argued until I asked if any of the nurses were sharing shifts across wards or working with covid positive patients. Then I asked how many kids on the ward had pseudomonas or rhinovirus or any of the other respiratory illnesses that would also be a danger to Mikaere. He shut up after that. I guess things on the ward weren’t ideal. We were towards the end of winter, so I’m not surprised.

Either way, Mikaere was discharged, with strict instructions about what to do if things got worse. Conveniently Sam had arrived and we went HOME. It was glorious to be back in the safety of our flat. After disinfecting ourselves with baths/showers/changes of clothes I went through all of Mikaere’s meds.

There’s one particular supplement he gets once a day, at lunchtime, called ubiquinol. It’s a supplement that supports cell repair and is a potent antioxidant.

However, the pharmacy had supplied ubiquinone, the oxidised form, which your liver needs to process into ubiquinol. Considering that Mikaere’s liver is already doing so much, and thanks to NKH, it’s not clear what exactly is happening in his liver, anything out of the ordinary could cause things to go sideways.

The horror of it was that because the dose required more capsules than was supplied in the packet, the pharmacist had supplied extras in a jar, and had mislabelled the jar ubiquinol and not ubiquinone (which was the drug supplied). Sam, who doesn’t usually do the 12 meds’ didn’t think anything of it. The jar had the right label on it, so it should have been the right med.

I was livid (with the pharmacy, not with Sam). Our prescription clearly states it should be ubiquinol, not ubiquinone. I kicked off a formal investigation and it turned out a locum pharmacist had made a mistake, and had thought there was no difference between the oxidised and reduced form. They didn’t have ubiquinol in stock, easier to substitute than order in. No harm interchanging them. He could have been right, in a typical patient. But let’s not make guesstimates when the patient has a rare metabolic disorder.

I was gutted, because I really like that pharmacy. They’ve been so good to us, and this was the first mistake they’d made in the three years we’ve been with them.

Luckily, the owner of the pharmacy knows us and was equally horrified. He implemented a whole range of safety checks to make sure it wouldn’t happen again (to us or anyone else) and the locum was let go. I’m sad someone had to lose their job, but I’m also frustrated that the safety, health and quality of life of my baby boy is so heavily reliant on others doing their job as they should, without guesstimates or convenience-based substitutions.

We stopped giving Mikaere ubiquinone, and the pharmacy shipped out ubiquinol quick smart.

To be safe, we also opened new bottles of meds we thought might have oxidised. Between having pooped, ubiquinol and unoxidised meds, Mikaere’s seizures eased, and we settled back into our regular routine.

Sam’s convinced it was the pooping. I’m sure it was the ubiquinone. It could have been some unknown pain/calpol. (In my head I can hear Kai’s Grandma telling us the moon was full). Either way, I’m glad we went in to get him checked out, but I’m more relieved that we all got through to the other side safe.

The special needs life is no walk in the park. Hey ho, onwards in isolation we go!

Oct 24
0

On keeping my eye on the (Zonisamide) ball

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I feel urgent. I’m in the car, silently willing traffic to get out of the way. Mikaere’s fine next to me, kicking the shit out of some bells tied to ribbons in front of him.

There’s been a mix up, and I wasn’t top of my game enough to catch it, and now there is all sorts of hustling happening. There are four medications Kai can’t skip. Two for his glycine, and two for his seizures. We’ve recently switched services, a new GP which comes with a new pharmacy.  Except that our new pharmacy doesn’t call you when the medications are in, and also isn’t open on weekends (literally wtf).

So, I’m in a panic because we have exactly one anti-epileptic dose for the weekend, when we need at least four doses. Fuck. Missing them and facing a weekend of seizures (and all the joy that comes with them) is not how I want to spend my weekend.

But the anti-epileptic Mikaere is on is not your typical run of the mill anti-epileptic. That’s because the bog standard seizure medications are contraindicative with NKH.  So, he’s on a medication that’s not licensed for children under 6, and it’s usually down the bottom of the list of what a neurologist would try, because it’s more expensive.  What I’m saying is that it’s not a medication most pharmacy’s have on hand. It’s usually special order.

Conveniently, I called our old pharmacy, who have a box in stock (woo!).  But, to pick up the box, I need a prescription, and our GP is closed. So I call our CCN, who was all hands on deck for someone else’s emergency. Womp. Next step was to call our palliative Care team, who have a backup GP but told me to get in touch with our local hospital as technically we’re not in hospice on a symptom stay, so should be supported by our community team.

So I call the switch board of our local hospital, who put me through to casualty, who told me to ring 1111. I rang 1111 and spoke to a lady who could send a repeat prescription to only specific pharmacies.  Lovely. So I ring the four pharmacies they work with, and none of them have it in stock.

I call 1111 back, and speak to a doctor who took a history. Said that because the medication is usually only recommended for those over the age of 6 (and my son is 2) and so we’d need to be reviewed, with documentation that he’s been prescribed it.

So, I made us an appointment for in 30 minutes. We live 25 minutes away, the next dose is due in 20 minutes, so the three of hustle to get out the door.

Traffic is awful, but we manage. The doctor see’s us right away (and I feel terrible for wasting her time, showing her our latest review letter with medications + doses listed, and with the last prescription receipt) and then we make it to the pharmacy just before it closes.

I make up the dose right there in the car, and the dose is only 15 minutes late.

I’m relieved, but fuck you guys. That was hours and hours of hustle because I didn’t know our local pharmacy isn’t open on weekends.

Hey ho. I’m glad we worked it out in the end.

Aug 01
1

On small wins

By | #teammikaere | No Comments
Mikaere’s on two antiepileptics and a supplement to help with his seizures: Zonisamide, Phenobarbital and Omega 3 (with all of it’s fantastic DHA seizure support capabilities). Now, it turns out that phenobarbital is one of the most frequent drugs used to treat neonatal seizures, and considering Mikaere is palliative it seemed like a good choice when nothing else was working.
 
But here’s the thing, long-term use of Phenobarbital has enough studies to suggest it has a terrible effect on a developing nervous system, it has a detrimental developmental effect too (with developmental quotient declines (in both cognitive and motor skill) which are thought to reflect a slowed neurological growth rate) and causes an increase in the probability of a cerebral palsy outcome.
 
Whats more, side effects include a decreased level on consciousness (it’s essentially a sedative) and it’s addictive, causing withdrawal symptoms when weaning. Aaaaand it would make Mikaere vomit. If it wasn’t diluted and given really really slowly he would vomit immediately.
 
Also, it turns out phenobarbital is used in the lethal injection of death row inmates and also prescribed to terminally ill patients to allow them to end their life through physician-assisted suicide. Always nice to know we’ve been giving this drug to our baby twice a day for last 14 months.
 
A good 9 months ago now Mikaere’s seizures started becoming a bit more, dare I say it, under control? Mikaere started having a handful of seizure free days. At first, it was sporadic, one day here, one day there. It was amazing, so amazing to see. The fewer seizures he had, the more gains he was making. Eventually, he worked himself up to two or three day stretches. I was ecstatic, to say the least.
 
It was at this point we discussed weaning with our palliative care team. There wasn’t much harm, they said. As long as we went slowly. If there was an increase in seizures we could put the dose up, no problem. So we started a very very slow wean. Every three or four weeks, we’d reduce the dose by 2mg (which is about 0.2ml – a tiny tiny amount). We’d wait, and watch. We already track Mikaere’s seizures and I’d hold my breath waiting to see if there would be more seizures. Sometimes there would be if he had a cold or was having a tough time. Sometimes you wouldn’t have noticed the dose had dropped.
 
It felt tricky, weaning. We eventually got to a sub-therapeutic dose. We high fived that day. And today? Today, after months and months and months of tiny, incremental weans – we’ve managed to get Mikaere off phenobarbital.
 
It’s been amazing. He’s been more awake and aware, making more developmental gains. I have seen an increase in seizures if the Omega 3 is a bit old (and has oxidised) or his Zonisamide dose is later than it should be, but generally, as long as we’re on the ball he’s a happy little guy who is still having some seizure days.
 
I’m stoked to have Mikaere off one of the medications. Phenobarbital is still on our list of emergency meds, but I’m delighted we’re no longer giving it on a twice-daily basis.
 
Celebrating small wins, woohoo!
Mar 08
0

On the superstitious good things

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There’s this thing about good times. When things are good, I feel like I’m holding my breath waiting for them to be not good. Like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m told this not uncommon when parenting a child with a progressive disorder. When you’ve been on end of life and expect to be again, any good time is by nature of NKH, temporary. A nice, tiny haven where you ache to be with every fibre of your being, knowing full well you can’t live in the realm of ‘everything will be okay forever’.

So Mikaere recently enjoyed a good period. I got a bit superstitious about it and didn’t want to say anything in case it jinxed it. This makes zero logical sense and I know that Kai’s wellbeing does not hinge on whether I say he’s doing well or not. Nonetheless, there a words we don’t say unless we have to, and when we do we touch wood. (I’ve never been more superstitious in my life – when there are big, important things you can’t control you find ways to make yourself feel better about them).

So. Let me tell you a big thing. Mikaere hadn’t had a seizure since before Christmas.

Until last week.

I can’t begin to tell you how we watched him progress with no seizures. How his eyesight got better, how he started sleeping through the night, how his tone improved, how we saw more smiles and how he started vocalising more and eating better. Doing everything more and better. When his brain wasn’t fighting seizures it was developing. With new skills and new all sorts.

We don’t know why the seizures stopped. It could be he was well. It could be the medications were bang on. It could be the neuroprotectant meds we started. It could be that the planets were aligned or the sands were blowing east in Africa.

We don’t know and that bothers me. If I don’t know then I cant replicate it. This giant balancing act we’re constantly managing, we’ve hit on a magic time and I don’t know what we’ve done. Maybe we didn’t do anything. Maybe this is something we can’t control.

I hate that idea, because now the seizures are back and I don’t know why or how to stop them.

The first one I just caught out of the edge of my eye and I wasn’t convinced it was a seizure. It could have been a stretch, or a twitch. The second one was unmistakably a seizure. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. I don’t even know how to explain the despair. That terrible sinking feeling, the ‘here we go, battlestations’ type familiar mentality you have when your baby has frequent fits.

I’ve spent hours pouring over my notes of his meds, all the activities we’ve done in the last few weeks to figure it what was going on. Was his meds off? Had he outgrown his meds, has he put on weight or lost weight? Was he in pain? Was it something he ate? Did I feed him something with unlisted ingredients that he’s reacting to? Was it something I stored his food in, did something leach? Did he have a temp, was he ill? Was he teething? Is this NKH progression? The constant back and forth and second guessing.

And then the constantly whirling questions about the affects of the seizures. Was Mikaere going to lose all the skills we’d been working on? Was he going to lose his developmental momentum? Were we going to back to sleeping in shifts and constantly on guard? Was this going to slip down into something more sinister?

I don’t know. It’s tough not knowing. I did what I could, which was check and recheck his emergency meds, the rescue medication. I settled in the counting and timing and comforting after each one. I became paranoid about leaving the room, and would even move him into the bathroom with me if I had to use the facilities.

I just, I hate this. I hate that my baby is suffering seizures again. They’re so disorienting and horrible for Mikaere. They mess up our days and we’re all out of routine.

And then it got worse. The seizures started clustering, and we started having to give emergency rescue medication. I cried the first time, as a gently administered a round of midazolam. Kai’s grandad once told us that it’s midazolam they use the euthanise whales that have stranded themselves. I hate sedating Mikaere. I hate watching him slip into that groggy fog, I hate watching him fight to stay conscious. I hate watching him seize more though, so I do it.

But then he seized again, multiple times. And throughout the day I was using more and more rescue meds.

And I realise that this is exactly what I worried about in the good times. That we’d end up here, multiple clusters of seizures, having to use emergency rescue meds, watching my baby suffer continuously and not knowing what damage is happening to his little brain.

Seizures are horrific. NKH is such a bitch

—-

I know I’m always asking. Help us find a cure. Donate, or buy an Eva book if you’re able. Every bit helps.

Nov 13
0

Kai 101: The medications

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This is a crazy one. Everyone knows Kai takes medication. It makes sense, he’s a kid with special needs and in the medical world it means fix what we can with drugs. That’s how the medical industry works, mostly. I’m not getting down on it, drugs means we can reduce Kai’s glycine levels in his blood. It means we can give his brain a break from the seizures if we have to. It means we can, somewhat, help him.

Kai is on a six hourly schedule – every six hours he gets 6-7 different medications (not including the 2:30pm stint where we give the one medication as far away from the other meds as we can).

His entire routine is set around these medications. He can’t tolerate some of the meds on an empty stomach, some require an empty stomach. so we do some meds, we feed him, and we wait 15 minutes and do the rest. Because of this Kai is eating at least every six hours, we typically do five meals a day. No snacks, just meals with additional water flushes.

Different to your typical toddler.

It’s also tricky getting the meds sometimes. Two come from the hospital (where one is ordered in from the states for us and the other is way off license use). Ten meds we can order through our gp/pharmacist, and one vitamin I order through Amazon. I do a stocktake once a month and request all the things when we’re getting low. I’m also the one in charge of asking for dose reviews. Kai’s weighed every three weeks or so by our health visitor, which dictates some of the dosages.

If I think Kai needs to go up or down (it’s pretty easy to work out, once you know the mg/kg/day ratio) I email our consultant, and cc in our community nurses. They’ll let the gp know so the next time I order through everything is on the correct dosage.

In the beginning it was overwhelming – leaving the house to go anywhere that wasn’t a five minute walk away because a logistical nightmare. I’m glad we’ve adjusted – I’m glad it’s not overwhelming anymore … it’s become a routine now. Typically I’ll do the 6am meds, and Sam will do the midnight meds if it’s just us. If we have overnight help it’ll be the nurses. During the day it’s typically me, or Sam if he’s home or the nurse if we have help. We have a little medication station where all the meds are, with some made up earlier in the day and some in the fridge. It’s pretty much overtaken our counter space, and our cutlery drawer is now shares the space with syringes. We have stuck giant whiteboard paper up, and written Kai’s med schedule where everyone can see it.

We’re making it work, because this now is our normal. A crazy amount of medication and the never ending syringe sterilising and 6 hourly meds – this is our normal as part of the special needs path.

The things we do, hey?

 

Side notes: