It has been a very interesting day.  Beth, Gage, Cody, and I started the day leaving around 5-530am this morning to get to Duke for 2 appts. One appt with Dr Gallentine the neurologist and the other was to Dr Rasheed B.....(I cant say or spell his last name but he is really nice so far and highly recommended).  As you read this email keep in mind that Cody is Gage's 10 year old brother who calls 911, and leaves the room whenever anything medical is going on with Gage.  Cody gets weak, and faints. Just keep this in mind as you read on.... Gage had a pretty good trip up to Duke, but over the last week and weekend he has had multiple seizures (big and little) and wretching.  It is a little discouraging due to VNS being placed and still having such great hope that these will get better.  I mean we are not asking for them to go away, b/c we know that he will have seizures but give the my little sugar plum a break.  I kept him a little Friday with his other brother Ryan ( who tells me all the time as we are looking at Gage that Gage is so sweet he could eat him with a spoon).  During the time I kept him, Gage had 3 seizures and one was when he was in a deep sleep and came out in a hard seizure.  The magnet did not help with that seizure, but it helps with some of the others.  It is really heart wrenching to see him sleeping so peacefully and then be panting and having a seizure--and you have to remember to look at your watch time it, put the magnet and look for results, grab the emergency Diastat bag just in case and the suction, and the whole time you are telling Gage it is OK  and praying to the Lord to take it away and for Satan to leave because he has no hold on this child of God, and then you count and look making sure he is breathing b/c that may need to come next.  After the episode when Gage is smiling, you want someone to walk in, rub you on the shoulder, and tell you it really is going to be OK. But you know the Lord is there and you keep on going, because otherwise how would we ever get up to do it again. Anyway talking about today's visit, before Dr Gallentine walked into the room these 2 interns walked in and on the white coat was Psychiatry..... I thought "Oh well, Dr Gallentine knows that Beth and I have finally lost it and need a family consult". But it turns out this fellow was truly just doing the history and physical exam. Well Cody was sitting in a corner chair, well away from the table where Gage was and the intern was checking Gage's reflexes with the reflex hammer.  Out of the corner of my eye I see Cody kind of sliding to the floor.  The interns are walking out and I go over to Cody and he tells Aunt Kim "I got really weak in the legs when that hammer came out".  We put him in a chair and legs up, and Beth and I were laughing so hard.  So we try and prepare Cody for the next phase when Dr Gallentine comes in and holds the device over Gage's chest (no needles etc) and then we jokingly tell him the other MD was a psychiatrist and that maybe they could work on his phobia while we are here.  Cody is laughing but staying away from the treatment table.  Sure enough when the MDs come in the Psychiatrist comes and sits right beside Cody and Cody immediately goes into his problem and the DX is Cave man Syndrome.  We do not know if this is true but Cody now knows why he is the way he is.  Meanwhile Gage had 2 undissolved sutures pulled out of his neck and chest without a whimper while his brother received "therapy" in the corner of the room. Dr Gallentine said that VNS and Gage with his multitype seizures will require trial and error, and he went up on the voltage of the device and the magnet.  We will leave his medications alone for now. We return in 2 weeks, and hope and pray for better news.  We also saw Dr Rasheed who changed Gage's blood pressure medication dose and added another due to wheezing.  We also had to go get a heart echocardiogram to make sure that Gage's heart is not having left sided enlargement or thickening, and we will hear back from that later this week.  This is a side effect and problem with his medications and diagnosis.  Cody was so proud that he did really well with the echo "but that valve stuff opening and closing-he had to go sit down" Remember he has Cave man Syndrome.Gage had a few seizures on the way home, and Aunt Kim thought Cody was having a seizure but he was actually dancing in the seat.  Beth and I were laughing and Cody said he learned to dance from Ryan who saw it on an Elvis film.  It was NOT pretty.  I told Cody to go ask Papa about dancing, because what he was doing had to be related to the Cave man diagnosis.  Please continue to pray for Beth and Gage and this VNS that it will stop some of these seizures. It is heartbreaking, frustrating, and devastating to watch these one after another sometimes and what it does to my little sugar plum's body.  It is as exhausting as watching Cody struggle to dance.  We continue to be blessed daily, and I just tell you don't ever take a healthy aggravating kid for granted. We know the Lord is working in all of us and patience has NEVER been one of my virtues.  As stressful as it is, the Lord gives us the Cave man Syndrome moments and Cody's solid gold dancing moves to make a not so great day-a memorable day.  That is what we hold on to.  You can always look around and find SOMETHING to smile about.  Thanks for everything,
*BETH*