JAYDEN AND HIS VNS

Jayden has been home for a little over a week now. Despite having 3 relatively short seizures since his surgery, nearly 2 weeks ago, he is doing great! This is the toughest kid I know! For those of you who don't know the whole story........ Jayden was flown to UCSF on July 29th after having a seizure that lasted 2 hours. He was admitted in to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and remained there for a total of 3 weeks. It was very clear to the Pediatric Neurology Team that Jayden was running out of options as far as medicines go so they decided that surgery was the next step. Jayden had surgery on August 15th to have a Vagus Nerve Stimulator placed. The goal of this treatment is to decrease the number and severity of seizures while minimizing the drug side effects to increase the quality of life for Jayden. How does it work? The Pulse Generator (battery) delivers small amounts of electrical current to the Vagus nerve intermittently (30 seconds on 5 minutes off) Jayden doesn't feel a thing. This goes on 24 hours a day 7 days a week. We don't expect to see results right away. Infact, the VNS tends to work better the longer it is in. So a year from now is when we should start seeing our best results. As far as I am concerned it is already helping. I can't even remember the last time Jayden has a 5 minute seizure. Even if the seizure don't go away completly (I don't expect them to) I will be happy if they are controlled enough for me to take care of Jayden at home:) Dr. Perry was the Neurogsurgeon who took such great care of Jayden. Thanks Dr. Perry and Caroline and the rest of the team for taking such great care of Jayden. He's healing nicely.