Happy New Year! Latest follow up at UCLA

Happy New Year!

We had a lovely Christmas and New Year's Holiday.  Jenelle really enjoyed playing with new toys and just cuddling with family.  I share photos from the holidays at a later time.

Jenelle had a follow up appointment at UCLA today with Dr. Shields.  He was pleased with our report that her seizures have been under control with Onfi.  I told Dr. Shields about Jenelle small regression on goals from her chaotic seizures earlier this year and that I wanted to give her some more time to catch up.  He agreed that it is good to have the seizures under control, and thinks it's time to see if we can wean her off one of her medications.  I felt that when we tried to wean from Vimpat earlier this year, it made her seizures worse, so we both agreed that Felbatol is the medication we should try to wean.  Felbatol has the worst side effects with potential damage to her liver and other organs, and she's been on it the longest.  Dr. Shields also feels it is important to get off Felbatol before she officially starts puberty.  So, we are going to slowly, very slowly start to decrease her Felbatol to see if we can lower the dose and maintain seizure consistency.

Everything else was good for Jenelle - she weighs 68 pounds and is 53 inches tall.  When Dr. Shields walked into the room, Jenelle reached her hand out for his.  It was very sweet.