December 15th, the day we get in to see the neurologist

As I wrote in the previous post after Brady's seizure at 10:27pm on December 14th, we tried to get some sleep so we would be somewhat fresh for our visit with Dr. Katherman. At 3:15am we were awaken by Brady have another grand mal seizure, this made 5 within a 20 hour period! I gave him a valium suppository once it was over but before he got on his feet. At this point both Jeff and I were a complete nervous wreck! Brady came out of the seizure fairly quickly as usual and seemed to be okay, but we were terrified that another one would start up.

Knowing that the neurologist's office was connected to the Emergency Vet, we decided to get ready and leave to make our trip to Yorktown. Our thoughts were that if another seizure did come on and it ended up being an emergency then at least we would be in route or have already arrived. We pulled out of our driveway at 4:20am and arrived in Yorktown a little after 6:00am.
Thank God Brady didn't have any more seizures and we didn't need to go to the Emergency Vet.
But at least we were there if the need arose. Our appointment wasn't until 11:00am, but once the office opened I went in to let the staff know what had been going on with Brady. The receptionist said that the Doctor would be in shortly and would be seeing us soon. It was about 9:30 am when we met with the Dr. Katherman. We were very pleased and impressed with both her and her staff. They were all very informative, helpful and compassionate. After talking with us at length about idiopathic epilepsy and the various methods and drugs of treatment, Dr. Katherman told us that her plan for Brady was to leave him on his current medications and to bring another AED (add-on epileptic drug) on board by the name of Zonisamide. It is a human anti-epileptic drug that has recently been used with great success in some dogs. We were cautioned that every epileptic dog is different and what may work for one may not work for another. Brady started on Zonisamide that very day. We left Dr. Katherman's office on what started out as a somber, dreary day with a new ray of hope!