Article on Karlie

This is an article that was in our newspaper Sunday.......Front page even.



Family logs lot of miles battling childhood epilepsyBy Kasey Fowler, Staff Writer
“She would be walking or sitting and just fall over.”Amy Earhart noticed last October her 3-year-old daughter, Karlie, was falling over at random.“She would be in the middle of a conversation, lose balance and fall over,” Amy said.Her parents became worried one night when these episodes happened almost continuously.“She did that like 20 times in 45 minutes, so we took her to the emergency room to rule out a brain tumor,” Amy said. “They did a CAT scan and said everything looked normal.”Karlie was taken the emergency room on a Friday. Doctors there asked her parents to schedule an appointment with her doctor on Monday.That’s when Karlie was diagnosed with childhood epilepsy. According to epilepsy.com, epi-lepsy is a neurological condition that affects the nervous system.It usually is diagnosed after one has had at least two seizures not caused by a known medical condition, such as alcohol withdrawal or low blood sugar.Epileptic seizures may be related to a brain injury or family tendency. Most of the time a cause is un-known. Karlie’s twin brother, Killian, is not affected.“I’ve asked several (professionals). They said he was fine as far as seizures,” Amy said.Karlie saw a neurologist in Enid, but he was not a specialist in childhood epilepsy, Amy said.“We don’t have any pediatric neurologists here in Enid.”Neither St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center or Integris Bass Baptist Health Center specifically treat or have programs for children with epilepsy.“They sent us to OU Medical Center in Oklahoma City,” Amy said. “We went to them a couple of times, but she kept having seizures.After their visits to OU Medical Center, they were referred to a hospital in Texas.“They set up for us to go to Cook Children’s Hospital in Texas, but there was a six -week wait,” Amy said.Amy refused to wait six weeks to get Karlie help.“We called for an appointment in Tennessee,” Amy said.“We basically drove 11 hours for a doctor’s ap-pointment.”They drove that distance with hope and no guarantee Karlie could be helped.Once they got to Tennessee, Karlie immediately was admitted on a emergency basis.“When they admitted her, she was basically in a constant seizure, and it was even worse when she slept,” Amy said.Shortly after admission, Karlie was started on a video EEG.The video EEG meant Karlie had 20 or more sensors placed on her head to monitor brain activity. She also had a video camera on her all the time and a person visually monitoring her in the room.If the person in the room thought he saw a seizure, he would push a button. Someone would go back to the video and brain scans and look at what happened visually and in the brain.“She was having sub-clinical seizures,” Amy said. “They are all happening in her head.”An MRI was done and again confirmed there were no tumors in Karlie’s brain.Karlie’s new doctor, James Wheless, did not think surgery was a good option.“Dr. Wheless told us she was not a good candidate for surgery because her seizures were generalized over the right side of her brain,” Amy said.Karlie spent about a week in the hospital and now is on a combination of drugs to try to control her seizures.“The doctors are very confident we can get it under control,” Amy said. “It could take a year to two years to get completely under control.”Karlie has been on several different combinations of drugs to try to control her seizures.“Seizures are like fingerprints,” Amy said. “No two kids are the same, and they can’t be controlled by the same drug or combination of drugs.”Karlie’s drug combination could change again, even before the next trip to Tennessee, planned for mid-October.“We will go to Tennessee about every two months until they can control the seizures,” Amy said.Amy has been making the trips to Tennessee without her husband because he has had to work.“My mom goes with me. Mom has helped a lot. We have a lot of help from family and friends,” Amy said.Killian hasn’t been taking Karlie having seizures well, his mother said.“He gets jealous of the attention, really jealous,” Amy said. “We tend to ask her a lot because we can’t see. He doesn’t understand that.”Karlie’s mom is hoping the seizures will go away on their own, but it isn’t a sure thing.“Because they can’t find a source, she could grow out of it, but it is a wait and see thing,” Amy said.Karlie is just like any kid when she isn’t having problems with her epilepsy, according to her mom.“When she is having seizures she gets tired,” Amy said, “When she isn’t having seizures you can’t tell any difference from any other kid.”

update

OK. So I have not done real well at updating. I'm sorry for that. Things have been crazy around the house. We had the start of College football season 2 weeks ago. (huge thing at my house) and then last week (after the very first game) I decided we would scrape popcorn off of my ceiling and paint the walls.........major messy job. so we had to clear out my living room completely and then do all the work, get the carpet cleaned and then move it all back in. Huge ordeal. Then we had a garage sale last weekend.

Anyway, Karlie is doing well. I think that her seizures were doing really good once we got back from Memphis. She would sleep so hard that she would talk in her sleep. She would say the funniest things while she was sleeping!!!!! but she has kinda quit that for now. I think that the seizures are creeping back up.....But she told me the other day that she likes her new applesauce (her applesauce with out the valium in it) But she also told me that she is still having little bitty seizures.....they are the sub-clinical ones because I don't actually see them. But I can hear the catch in her breathing and see the tiredness in her eyes. I have been in what seems like nearly constant contact with the dr's office. They are a bunch of really great people Dr Wheless's nurse is very nice. I have never met her, but talked to her a phone. Anyway, I will try and update more a little later, but that is the latest for now.


sorry I have been so lax about the updating.