Update on Jake

Ok, because someone asked.... I guess I haven't given an update on how we told Jake about the trip or about how he's doing now.

First the trip. I was really discrete about the travel thing. In the hospital I went out into the hallway and talked to the doctor. At the neurologist's office I just said flat out what about travel? We have two weddings this summer that are out of town, is he limited in any way? Luckily he just said no and didn't put a qualifier on number of miles or anything so we were off the hook there.

Unfortunately, his boss sort of let the cat out of the bag a little early. When I took Jake back to work on that Tuesday his boss looked and me and said so is the thing still on. "Yes..." And Jake knows right? "NO"

So it was at that point that Jake knew something was up, he just didn't know what. Then later on that day he called me to ask me when he would be missing work. I told him I didn't know what he was talking about. So he said that his boss told him he might be missing work soon and that he needed to have a list of things for his helper to do.

I could have just reached through the phone and slapped his boss. Two weeks earlier I had called to specifically address this issue. I had mentioned that maybe we could tell him there was a big inspection coming up or something so he would have all of his work done. His boss said not to worry about it. Then the week before they went and hired Jake a helper for the summer and apparently his boss forgot all about being discrete.

So then Jake knew something was up and that he might be missing a day or more of work for this something. But he still didn't know what. It was sort of fun to dangle it in front of him for the rest of the day. We were going out to dinner with Jess and Shane and he kept making comments like do I need to dress up for where we are going? Do I need to take anything to dinner? Are we coming back. I just laughed and told him I don't know what he thought we were doing but we were JUST going to dinner and then we were going back home.

Once we got to the restaurant we all ordered and then we ate and I thought perhaps we were NEVER going to tell him. Finally Jess pulled a card out of her purse that she had made with pictures of AR on it and pictures of stripper bass.

He read the card but still didn't fully understand where we were going until we told him those were pictures of AR. Then he was excited. He kept talking about needing to get this and do this and how many poles could he take because you know there is one pole for this and one pole for that and then he might need another one for this. I think Jess about fell over dead right then and there thinking OMG what did I do??

Luckily he had a bag to put his poles in so they didn't take up too much room or get tangled up with everything else in the back of the truck. All the way home he kept telling me that I should have waited until Wednesday morning to tell him because now there was NO WAY he was going to be able to sleep.

As you might have guessed, he was pretty excited and he really enjoyed the trip. Even two weeks later he is still talking about it and showing people the pictures of the fish. He can't wait to be able to go down there again.

Now on to the rest of the update. As I already mentioned when we were in the hospital they did a CT scan and a full tox and blood workup. It all came back clear. Then on Tuesday April 15th he had an appointment with the neurologist. He said that there are a million reasons that people have seizures and we may never know the exact cause. However, his gut feeling was that Jake's brain was healing from all of the drugs he did. He said he saw some changes on the CT scan that seemed to support that theory. None the less he still wanted to get a few more tests to rule everything else out.

That day they did some more blood screens including ones for Lead poisoning, Lyme disease and West Nile. His lead level was 0.5 which is fairly low, he was negative for Lyme disease and they said he had been exposed to West Nile. I'm not sure what that means, if he had it or just was around it, but either way they said that all the tests looked normal and didn't give them any other reasons that he would have had the siezure.

Then on Tuesday the 22nd he had an EEG and an MRI. We got the results of both of those tests last Friday and both of them were normal. Leading the doctor to stick by his original theory that Jake brain just might be healing from all of the drug use and he may never have another seizure.

However, upon my request they are going to do one final test. A sleep study. Jake has snored off and on for some time and before he had the seizure I had mentioned to him having him tested for sleep apnea since his aunt has it. However, after the seizure his snoring got MUCH worse and he started making these twitching leg movements in his sleep. So they are going to do the sleep study to make sure he does not have apnea and also to make sure he's not having little seizures in his sleep.

Today he goes in to be evaluated and then they will set up the time for the sleep study. As we talked about it last Friday with a group we go out with after the meeting two of the four other guys had had sleep studies also and said they were no big deal. They just hook him up to electrodes and then he goes to sleep. Hopefully he can sleep there. I think I would have troubles.

So for now, that is all we know. I'll update you with more news after the sleep study if they find anything.