Two doctors, two differing opinions (Part II - The Second Opinion)

After being diagnosed as being epileptic by a physician and given a medicine to take for life(?) we decided to get a second opinion. This time we went straight to a neurologist. This time we didn't drag the kids along. We went to the hospital strolling hand in hand. It felt rather nice to be alone with hubby without the kids along even if it was just a visit to the hospital. It had been too long since we spent time just being with each other, just the two of us. So I felt a warm glow even though I was aprehensive.

The neurologist wanted me to do more tests, this time an MRI of the brain. This started me thinking of the worst, possible brain tumour etc. Hmm.. if give the choice, I suppose one would pick epilepsy (the lesser evil) rather than brain tumour.

After seeing the results of the MRI together with the EEG and CT Scan results from the first doctor, the neurologist told me a few things. He said...

• that he was not very troubled by my EEG results
• he would not diagnose me as epileptic since this is a first seizure. (wait and see first, he says. the percentage chance of a second seizure occurring comes down with time)
• he does not think I need medication

I asked him a few things namely...

1. I describe to him a "funny feeling" I've had for some time and asked him whether that was an aura or partial seizure as I remember having that "funny feeling" just before I fell asleep. (the first doctor had told me that it was an aura, a warning sign of an impending seizure which some people with epilepsy have)
2. I asked him whether it was safe to drive and cook
3. I asked him whether it was safe to get pregnant again

to which he replied...

1. What you have described to me does not sound like an aura of a seizure
2. Don't live your life in fear over this one seizure (he told me to avoid driving for a while to be on the safe side and as for cooking, he said he doesn't feel theres any danger)
3. He told me to go home and start trying for a baby right away since my husband and I are not young. He didn't think there was any reason to wait
4. He didn't think that I needed to see him again for any follow up appointments

He was very patient and answered all the questions I had (most of which I had prepared and written down in a notebook). He even gave me a book he had written (in Chinese) to give to my father to read so that he would not be so worried. Before we left, we joked that we wished we would never see him again and vice versa.

I went away from this doctor visit feeling a bit better and slightly relieved. However, I still had to come to some decision. I have seen two doctors with very different opinion and diagnosis. One was so negavtive, the other was very positive and entirely different from the first. What do I do now? Take the medication or not? Which doctor is right? Should I go for a third opinion?

It was so confusing. I made an appointment with a third doctor but eventually, I decided that I would wait and see instead. I did not want to take a medication that has other side effects (other than weight gain, there would be sleepiness etc). I didn't want to go through my days in a drowsy sedated state.

However, by deciding not to take the medication, I had to take other preventive measures. Afterall, I have two young children to look after so their wellbeing is important to us. I decided to take better care of my own health by exercising, eating right and getting enough sleep. I also decided not to drive for a time and to hire a part time helper.

Post getting too long. To be continued.

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Two doctors, two differing opinions - Part I (The First Doctor)

After the seizure, I immediately made a doctor's appointment. I didn't know where to start or which doctor to go to, so I started off with a physician, whom I thought would probably do some diagnosis tests before referring me to the right doctor.

The physician did an ECG test on me before sending me to a neurologist at the same hospital to do an EEG and a CT Scan. (I'll explain about these tests in later postings). When I came back to him with the test results, he told me that I had epilepsy and gave me two month's supply of Epilim Chrono (Valproic acid and sodium valproate), then told me to see him again in two months.

As usual, the kids were with us at the doctor's (we drag them along everywhere we go) and they were bored and cranky from the long wait. I felt sad, so very sad and worried. How was I going to look after my two young children alone at home if I had epilepsy? What if I had a seizure while cooking and the fire was on? How would I be able to drive them to their kindergardens later on etc. Those thoughts filled my mind.

It was devastating for me to be told that I had epilepsy at age 39, out of the blue, overnight, suddenly, just like that. One day my life was normal and the next, I have epilepsy? I was told that I probably would have to take the medication for life and that it was very good to control seizures. I read the side effects and one of them was weight gain. The vain me cried out "Oh No". I had to take a medication that would make me fat when I'm working so hard to lose my post pregnancy weight?

Speaking about weight, after the first week of worry and being unhappy, I lost 5 pounds. I was surprised to see my face had shrunk when I looked in the mirror.

Vanity aside, I had to plan what to do next. Should I start taking the medicine that I had been prescribed? We decided that this was too big and too sudden and that a second opinion from another doctor was called for. And so off we went again for another doctor's appointment. This time we went to see a neurologist.

To be continued in the next post.

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My greatest fear as a mother

My greatest fear as a mother is to be unable to look after my children while they still need me, whether due to illness or death. I'd like to at least be around till they are grown and independant.

My own mother died at age 46 leaving my dad age 44 then and 5 kids behind. As a mum now, I realise how hard it must have been for my own mother to be diagnosed of a terminal illness and later on to leave us, her family behind, to leave her husband behind to look after 5 kids aged 10, 14, 15, 17 & 18.

When I had a seizure and had to go for several diagnosis tests. I was terrified. I didn't want to be like my mum. I went for an ECG, an EEG, a CT Scan and a MRI. (I'll write about each of them in detail later on). I was so worried that they would find a brain tumour. I had an unexplained seizure, so I thought of the worse case scenarios to mentally prepare myself for what the doctor might say.

What was most frightening about it to me was the fact that everything seemed so ordinary, nothing unusual at all. All I remember about it was, it was an evening like any other evening. I was breastfeeding my baby to sleep and chit chatting with my daughter. We sang nursery rhymes and had a storytelling session, then everybody went to sleep.

And the next thing I knew, I was sitting in the living room with my husband looking at me with concern and asking me whether I was alright. There was blood on the side of my mouth where I had bitten my tongue apparently during the seizure. I went to look in the mirror and saw a small wound at the side of my tongue and I felt a slight pain and numbness there.

My husband had fallen asleep in the living room in front of the tv (again) when he heard the baby crying unattended. He went to the bedroom to check, only to find his wife staring at him through blank unseeing eyes, blood dribbling down the side of her mouth and both the kids crying loudly. I did not respond to him when he spoke to me. Urgh! It must have been not a very pleasant sight and I probably gave him a big scare.

I have no recollection of what happened. Nor do I recall walking from the bedroom to the living room, aided by my husband. My husband told me later on that I stopped to put a blanket over the baby in the cot before I walked to the living room. Hmmm.. mother instinct is always around isn't it, even when not fully concious.

I was asleep at the time so I did not hurt myself from a fall and so it was painless in that sense but it felt very scary to lose myself, even for a few moments like this ie to be there and not really there at all, to lose conciousness for those few moments.

And I must have given my poor little girl such a big scare too because for many, many, many months after that she still kept on asking me "Mummy, why you not feeling well? Why got blood there?" as she pointed to my lips. I felt so bad, so very bad. I was extremely worried that it had been traumatic for her to witness her mum trashing about, biting her tongue and not responding to her. Aaargh! I am supposed to protect my little ones, not scare them!

Since the seizure happened in my sleep, I was afraid to go to sleep for a time. At the same time, I also felt afraid when I did not have enough sleep because I was worried that it may trigger another seizure. So there I was afraid to sleep and afraid not to sleep. Fear is not a very nice emotion to feel.

Well, those were some of my feelings I recall having at the time. I'll write next about my visit to the doctors.

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Mothers, take care of your health

I know a lot of mothers who put themselves last when it comes to taking care of their health, amongst other things. Family always come first.

It starts with pregnancy. When I was pregnant, I was afraid to take any medication for fear it would harm the baby. This continued to the time when I was breastfeeding. When I have a minor ailment, I often put off the visit to the doctor, because theres never enough time. Besides, I hate dragging the kids along whenever I have to go for any doctor's appointment.

Maybe I'm just using the kids as an excuse for my own procrastination and dislike for doctor visits. However, this is a foolish thing do to. Our health is really very important and something that must not be taken for granted of. What more, as mothers and wives, we should take care of ourselves first so that we can take care of our families better.

This became glaringly obvious to me last year when I had a health scare. I had a seizure. (Similiar to the kind of febrile seizures that babies and young children have when their fever goes up too high). Only, the seizure happened to me. It was an unprovoked seizure, meaning, it happened out of the blue, for no known reason (I wasn't sick or down with fever). It happened in my sleep. It was very scary. Not the seizure because I didn't feel anything but the implications of it were scary.

This time I didn't procrastinate. I went to see the doctors and did all sorts of tests. I shall be writing about those tests and my fears and feelings about the seizure (Do I have epilepsy?) over the next few postings because its something I would like to get out of my chest but its a long story which I will write over a few posts. And I shall do it here rather than on my personal blog.

This blog is not meant to be my personal blog, however, I do share some personal experiences. On this blog, I prefer to slant it towards sharing with other new mothers. It is my dream to built up a resource site for new mothers. So if any reader has any friends who are about to become a mother soon, I would appreciate if you share the url of this blog with them. Thank you.

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The Best Breast Pump

One of the things I didn't know about breastfeeding is that a breastpump is an essential part of breastfeeding (for those who face difficulty breastfeeding, otherwise your baby is the best breast pump there is), even more so, if you're a working mum and not for any other reason.

Whenever you look at glossy magazines, you see these lovely slim women, smiling down at their cute looking babies while breastfeeding effortless. It doesn't quite work that way. Not for me, it doesn't!

Breastfeeding doesn't feel quite as "natural" as I thought it was supposed to be. It took a lot of hard work and practise for me. (I'm speaking from personal experience. Perhaps some other lucky mum may have had it a lot easier and it does come naturally to them.)

When I was pregnant with my first kid, I bought a manual breastpump as a part of the list of my new baby shopping list. It was a long funnel like thing. After the baby came, I tried it out (when my baby had difficulty latching and could not feed directly) and it was hopeless. I could extract no milk from it.

My husband, the dear thing, quickly ran out to the stores and got me another. He was good. He came home with a manual Avent which was a little better and I managed to express from 1/2 ounces to 3 ounces of milk. Still a miserable amount. Sometimes it took 3 sessions of expressing for one single feed! (My baby had trouble latching and I had to feed her expressed breast milk using a spoon). It took up all my time, the expressing and spoon feeding. Phew!

By the time I had a second child, I was a little bit more prepared. (My second had latching difficulties too) The lactation consultant recommended that I get a battery operated Medela instead of using the manual pump, so off we went to the stores again. I found the Medela breast pump a bit more painful than the manual one which was more gentle. So I combined both. I took some plastic flap from my Avent breast pump and fixed it onto the Medela. Lol! It was less tiring but I could only still express about 3 ounces.

Finally, I ditched all the pumps and started hand expressing (yes, my own hand "pump"). It worked wonders! Soon, I was an expert at hand expressing. I've never milked a cow but I suppose this would be how it feels like to milk a cow, only....... I was the cow! I don't know about others, but I like hand expressing. I managed to get up to 8-9 ounces each time by expressing manually. (Of course, it helped that I expressed for 20-30 minutes every 2-3 hours). I find that expressing by hand is more gentle on the breast and I knew exactly where to press. I could express straight into the bottle for storing and it saved me a lot of work washing and sterelising the equipment.

Again, I stress that I'm speaking from personal experience and preference. Some may find hand expressing of milk difficult and the breast pump much easier to use. If you are interested in hand expressing or manual expression of your breast milk, below is a useful link to the Marmet technique of hand expression. (There are some diagrams there showing the right as well as the improper way to avoid when doing manual expression).

"The Marmet technique of manual expression was developed by a mother who needed to express her milk over an extended period of time for medical reasons. She found that her milk ejection reflex did not work as well as when her baby breastfed, so she also developed a method of massage and stimulation to assist this reflex. The key to the success of this technique is the combination of the method of expression and this massage." Read more here

Having said the above, (that I found the breast pump to be an essential part of breastfeeding), I would like to stress again that it was only because I had difficulty latching my babies. I do not wish to mislead mums into thinking that the breast pump can replace direct breastfeeding which is the best! So I'm going to add another link to this post to my favourite Dr Jack Newman. I find his articles on breastfeeding extremely useful.

"Many women are under the impression that it is necessary to own or use a pump to breastfeed. This is not so. There are very few circumstances under which it is necessary to express your milk. But women are being encouraged to pump their milk and give it to baby via bottle for the most unnecessary reasons: Weddings, doctor’s appointments, shopping…why not take the baby with you? How can babies not be welcome at weddings? Or, “so the father can feed the baby”! Partners were not meant to feed babies milk, and giving a bottle is not really helping. But they certainly can help feed the baby by helping mother with compressions, for example, (see Handout: #15 Breast Compressions) and they can help mothers in so many other ways as well.

The pump should not replace the baby; you and your baby receive numerous benefits in addition to nutrition by breastfeeding. No pump is as efficient as the natural pump that was made for your body, your baby! A baby who breastfeeds well is the best pump, but, granted some babies don’t breastfeed well. You do not need a breast pump to breastfeed; uninformed use of a breast pump can lead to premature weaning." Continue reading here.

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