EEG's (Electroencephalography)

Getting ready to fall asleep for his second EEG

EEG's are a bit of a scary thing for your first time.  You are lead into a small white room with a bed, a computer, sometimes a camera on the ceiling, and a few chairs.  You are supposed to somehow get your child in a comfortable position so that the EEG tech can stick many wires (Leeds) onto their head and then wrap them up like a mummy.  Noah of course HATES this whole process.  He cry's each and every time to the point of exhaustion and then falls asleep as soon as they are done wrapping his head.  Maybe this is their evil plan or something to get my child to sleep.  Since he is a baby I can't actually sleep deprive him at this point.  With every wire they stick to his head they have to first take a swab of sticky goop and apply it onto his scalp with a very irritating rubbing motion that makes him go bonkers.  They do this about 20-40 times depending on how many wires they are using that day.  Then once the wire is stuck on to his head they put a piece of tape over each one that pulls at his hair and makes him scream worse.  Then to make matter worse they take a mile long piece of gauze and turn my son from an adorable baby into an adorable mummy.  Noah's eyes are usually as red as cherries at this point and my anxiety and worry is through the roof.  I try everything I can to keep him calm.  Pacifiers, bottles, his favorite blankets or toys.  Nothing works but he does end up falling asleep out of pure exhaustion.  

20-30 minutes later after I sit in a darkened room watching the patterns on the computer and trying to figure out what constitutes a bad read or not the EEG tech finally returns to tell us it is done. The last time I was googling what an EEG looks like for a child with Infantile Spasms (hypsarrythmia) and honestly I can't make it all out.  Probably why they make you go through years of schooling to read those things.  Every breathe he took or movement of his head something was happening on the EEG so I was clueless what it all meant.  

The EEG tech is not allowed to tell you what the outcome is and they are just there to kind of torture your sleeping baby even further by flashing bright lights in front of their eyelids to see if that might cause a seizure.  Then, if your sleeping baby isn't awakened from the flashes, he is awakened from the EEG tech unwrapping his head and quickly yanking all the Leeds, goop, and tape of his scalp and hair.  Another screamfest arises and the tech tries to do this as fast as possible.  We then wipe a wet cloth over his hair to get some of the stickiness out of it and then we are sent on our way to await a phone call from the neurologist.  

I pray that if and when we have to have another EEG that Noah might be older and might be able to better handle the whole process.  For now as a small baby it annoys and scares the crap out of him and I think might be why I have started to see tiny grey hairs coming out on my head.