The specialist looking after you has recommended that you be admitted to the neurology ward (Ward 25) at The James Cook University Hospital for five – seven days for further investigation of your seizures.
The purpose of your admission will be to record, on video and EEG, the usual seizures that you experience.
While we may have been able to get eye-witness descriptions of your seizures before, it is very useful to be able to record video and EEG over a prolonged period of time during the night and day.
The videoed seizures and the EEG can then be reviewed and analysed. Characterising your seizures means that your specialist can advise you which treatments are the best treatments for you.
Your seizures may not occur frequently enough for us to be certain that we could manage to record one during your stay on Ward 25. If that is the case, then careful consideration will be given to reducing or stopping your epilepsy tablets on the first day of your admission.
Reducing or stopping your epilepsy tablets increases the chances of you having a seizure. Having a seizure can sometimes be dangerous, so, a member of staff will observe you at all times via CCTV so that if you have a seizure you can be attended to immediately, to minimise any possibility of harm.
If your seizure was prolonged, or if you had several one after the other then the ward doctor would restart medication straight away, giving your drugs into a vein if necessary.
When several seizures have been captured your specialist may suggest that the video and EEG recording should be stopped.
Some of the test results may be available immediately but your specialist may need to wait to see you in clinic to discuss the full results of the test when they become available.
At present there is a long waiting list for this investigation. When your name is near the top of the waiting list you will be contacted by one of the team who organise the investigation (a technologist or a nurse). They will ask you a series of questions, which will help us to decide the best and safest way of investigating you.
Because the hospital is a non-smoking hospital and because you will be largely confined to your room on the ward during the investigation, if you are usually a smoker, you will be unable to smoke. There is a smoking cessation team in the hospital that may be able to give you advice and help.
Yours sincerely
Sister C Bell, Ward Manager, Ward 25
and Mrs S Knox, Chief Technician, Department of Neurophysiology