The Slumber Party Dilemma

The joys of getting to sleep a little later in the summertime can't be appreciated enough!  Seeing as my girl's seizures can happen as she is waking up, the more sleep she can get, the better.  I'm having to do slightly less walking her around when she first wakes up, although I still have to do it.  I'm pretty sure that I remember her neurologist telling me that she's never heard of stopping a seizure at all.  I don't claim to stop a seizure.  However, I can see the signs of one coming...the arm jerks, the head twitches.  If I can get her on her feet and give her brain stimulation that it has to deal with, this method has worked for us 99% of the time.  Now that's if she can stand, which means that she hasn't gone into the seizure yet.  If I leave her to lie there on her own, she will have one.  


This causes me to go back and forth on the issue of sleeping next to her.  I'm currently single and Brad Pitt has not requested our special night alone.  Allowing her to sleep next to me ensures that Parent Ear turns into Parent Sensory.  I can feel her moving and can feel a twitch generally.  


What I can't do though is explain to her what she is going through.  She turns into a pint sized Hulk whenever I get her up on her feet.  Too tired to deal she gets all no nonsense CEO on me. I'd be lying if I said it didn't get to me.  But I realize that she doesn't really understand what's up.  She has never seen a seizure.  She's as present as a sewer grate when it happens, so how could she?  While her arms are jerking and I have her still somewhat coherent and work on bringing her out 100%, I'll ask her...did you feel that?  Your arms just jerked....did you feel that?  And the answer is pretty scary...."no".  


Her speech during this time sounds like she needs a breathalyzer.  She slurs and drops sentences.  So that leads me to the annual jackhammer event of the year: a birthday party for one of her friends, that involves a sleepover.  My Hammeress hardly ever gets to enjoy what most kids and parents take for granted.  I slept over so many houses and hosted mine in return as a kid (I happened to be friends with a bed wetter...and believe it or not, it didn't dampen my outlook on sleepovers!  Get it??)  In our case, sleepovers become a bone of contention.  She doesn't have it like I did.  Once we tell parents about the epilepsy, you can see the worry and nerves starting to cinder on the spot.  I don't blame them.  If it were me, and I didn't have any experience with epilepsy, I wouldn't feel too bad about expressing my inadequacies to do with handling a seizure.  But she thinks of herself as a perfectly normal teen.  One that can just sleep at someone else's house.  


She needs sleep.  Sleepovers alone and with a birthday party stack up against her.  First, the excitement alone can cause a seizure.  Next, lack of sleep of course!  It's a sleep over but not for sleep!  Being in a strange house, eating too much junk food are also big contributors to set up for a seizure.  Let's not forget the stigma attached to kids if they have a seizure in front of other kids.  This may or may not happen but if kids are the way that they were when I was child, it's inevitable.  


So while I have set her up for a most probable "No", I have not completely given my ruling on this.  Many times we can put her epilepsy one row behind the forefront of our minds. At the same time however, conditions we need to set are always one thought away.