Henry Made It 118 Days Of No Grand-Mals

Henry had a Grand-Mal about at about 1 AM today. I knew it was coming. We were upstairs, and he started to cry in a very urgent way. I ran downstairs and got an extra grain of Phenobarbital, I noticed Henry was acting blind and thought oh no.... He did take the Pheno. He really wanted to go downstairs. With me guiding him he started to go down the stairs, and at the third step from the bottom went into full blown Grand-mal and landed on his back/left side in seizuring position at the bottom of the steps.

I made sure he was reasonably safe at the bottom of the steps on the kitchen floor with a rug by his face, then went to the freezer that was only a few feet away and grabbed the ice bag. Unfortunately the ice bag was in one big huge clump and was useless. I tried, but no effect. I hated to have to bang up the ice bag to get it loose while he was seizuring, as noise and light is terribly aggravating during seizure. But the seizure kept going on, and I decided to go for it and proceeded to break up the ice, but it was just too hard, Finally the seizure did end. I didn't time it. The violent part was probably a couple minutes, then the other part was about 5 minutes. Felt like an eternity.

Note to self, ALWAYS make sure the ice in the bag is loose and on the ready!

I was very glad he was wearing the kind of jammies that have a velcro strip all the way down the back. I was able to very quickly unvelcro it. Light dimmer switches or soft lighting are very nice to have too during Grand-Mals.

118 days is very, very, very good. A few more days (Feb. 5th) he would have made it to 4 months which in all of his recorded seizure history he had never made it that long. With 118 days Grand-Mal free, he did beat any previous record he had.

How To Stop A Grand-Mal

I have posted many times in my other blog about the Ice Pack technique. It's something I feel I just can't post too much about. I am excited that it works so well! When Henry endured 13 Grand-Mals in a 4 month period, the ice pack technique was our saving grace. It likely saved Henry's life. Most of Henry's Grand-Mals are of an an absolute extreme magnitude. It amazes me, that I can bring Henry out of a full blown Grand-Mal within seconds using this Ice Pack technique.

This is a technique I learned of from this website.

Here are some important things to ensure the success of this technique:

~Apply it absolutely as SOON as you can. There is no point in applying it after the Grand-Mal is over. The sooner you apply it, and the faster you can stop the Grand-Mal, the shorter and easier the Post-Ictal will be. Henry's Post-Ictals were absolutely INSANE before we discovered the Ice-Pack technique. He now hardly has any Post-Ictal at all

~Apply the Ice-Pack here:



~I hear of many people using frozen veggies in lieu of ice. Frozen veggies are not as cold as ice. The degree of coldness is extremely important. You want to use whatever is absolutely coldest, so use ICE! If frozen veggies have worked for your dog, well I have good news, ice will work even better!

~Use crushed ice. It will form to the spine better.

~If your pet has long hair, you will need to part the hair well where the ice pack goes.

~Periodically check the bag, and make sure the ice is nicely broken up and not in a frozen lump. You will need to change the bag from time to time as the bag wears out.

~Since most dogs seize in the wee hours of the morning, if your freezer is far away from your bedroom, I suggest you keep the ice in a cooler by your bed at night.

ETA on Oct./20/08 The technique is not 100% foolproof and guaranteed to stop a seizure. Out of the 20 Grand-Mals we have used the ice-pack on, the ice pack was greatly succesful with 17, sort of successful with 2, and not at all succesful with 1. The 1 that the ice pack completely was not succesful at all on was the beginning of a cluster of 5 Grand-Mals.