The Ketogenic Diet: Is it just Our NEXT Best Last Hope, or a CURE?

I should be further along in researching the Ketogenic Diet by now.  I’ve had the book, Ketogenic Diets, for a month. I am slowly, so slowly making my way through the book, taking careful notes. Now I have a second book about the Atkins diet and a cookbook to pore over.

So, why do I drag my feet when something so important  - no, not just important - life altering, is at stake?  After much soul searching, I’m convinced it’s because something so important is at stake that I do this.

I’m convinced the Ketogenic Diet is our last best hope for Chris being at least close to seizure free.  It doesn’t matter that there have been several last best hopes so far:  medication changes (so far, nothing has given the relief we’d hoped for), video EEG in the hospital for a week (seizure focus wasn’t located), surgically implanted electrodes in his brain with another week of video EEG in the hospital (still nothing definitive - seizures propagate so fast it’s impossible to see where they begin - and then he had that brain bleed to recover from…), MRI with dye to show fluid flow to the brain (there is no blockage), Ictal SPECT (finally located general area  of seizure focus but it is inoperable).  And so it goes.

Of course, if the Keto Diet doesn’t work, there will be more last best hopes.  We still haven’t tried the VNS.

But THIS.  THIS is our last best hope for now.  It’s a non-invasive, natural remedy that has actually cured children and adults of their epilepsy.  Yes, I said it: cured.  They go off meds, and later off the diet and have no more seizures.

And I am afraid.

Afraid that what has happened with all the other last best hopes will happen again.  That my dream of Chris living a life free of seizures and the side effects from medication is just a pipe dream.  

But I will plow through and I will buy the right food and come up with recipes and find a way to help a 22 year old business owner live daily life while on a restrictive diet to control his seizures.  I will do it, because that’s what we warrior moms do.  Our desire for our kids to live a normal life into adulthood trumps the uncertainties.  The fear will still be there.  But fear is to be kicked in the teeth and pushed aside for the mission at hand.  We will do this diet and we will watch to see the results.  Waiting and hoping for the best outcome.

And if the results are not what our hopes and dreams had envisioned, we will try the next last best hope.  And the next.