Neurologist appointment and sick with pneumonia

Last night we had a consult scheduled with the pediatric neurologist to follow up on Riley's droopy eye. Riley's cough has been getting increasingly worse and he stayed home from school yesterday. Suzanne called the advice nurse and they scheduled time for us to see a pediatrician in Santa Clara right after the neurology appointment.

The neurologist is skeptical that Riley is having TIAs and instead suspects seizures. The fact that each episode presented the same symptoms - droopy eye, partially paralyzed face on the same side - makes a TIA unlikely. If clots were breaking off and entering his brain, you'd expect them to hit a different part of the brain each time and cause different symptoms. Further, he said you can see the after-effects of a TIA on an MRI up to 24-48 hours later, and he sees nothing on the MRI.

We're going to schedule Riley to have an EEG to further investigate seizures. If indeed the cause isn't related to clotting, Riley presumably can come off the coumadin therapy and we don't need to (yet) have all that scary talk about trying the Fontan again. We're going to push to get the EEG done before the holidays. If see him exhibiting the symptoms again, we should have him try several different things and try to videotape it. The neurologist asked us to post the video on YouTube and email him the link, I love 21st century medicine!

The pediatrician suspects that Riley has pneumonia again. She prescribed prednisolone and azithromycin. Riley's cough and sleeping improved considerably overnight as the prednisolone took effect. He's home from school again today but is sitting up and in better spirits.