Ella’s flat development curve leaves us very worried. There has been no substantial change in her abilities in the past few months. Granted, her head control is a bit better, but all other motor skills have remained basically stagnant. Turning over, sitting up or crawling don’t seem anywhere near. This, I guess is to be expected. It isn’t clear what is responsible, her condition or the massive amounts of medication she is on (or maybe a combination of both). The result is clear. She is moving ahead very very slowly. Our hopes focus on the changes the hemispherectomy will bring. But even then, there are no guarantees. Our task now is to get her to surgery with as few as possible seizure events on the way. Still, I often wonder what her sense of reality looks like. Reading newsgroups of Epilepsy patients, I often bump into grown up’s testimonials of how this or another medication effected them. Harrowing stories. (Leaving them depressed, unable to laugh or very flat emotionally), And these are adults that can verbalize the transformation, and can ask for something to be done. How does this effect a little baby at such a formulative time in her development, when she is supposed to be forming her picture of reality? She is a lot of fun though, and very cute. In the past few days she has been sleepier than usual and we don’t know if she is coming down with something (we are all in various stages of flu like conditions) or whether her medication blood levels are, for some reason, higher. We are keeping a log of her sleeping hours to know exactly how this is changing.