"I never slept through a whole night" - a user experience
Christina, one of Birgitte Madsen's two daughters, has epilepsy. Birgitte Madsen, Aarhus, has been installing an Epi-Care epilepsy alarm from Danish Care Technology in Christina's bed since mid-March. Birgitte Madsen has the following experience after using the Epi-Care Alarm for half a year:
Birgitte, mother, from Denmark
"My daughter Christina, who is almost 11 years old, was born with a brain injury, and she has been treated for epilepsy since the age of one. She had absences, muscle weakness and seizures. After being almost seizure-free for several years, Christina again had symptoms of severe seizures in the winter of 2001/2002. She had absences and sometimes tremors in her left arm."
Whether the changes were due to her getting into pre-puberty, and she was changing because of the hormones, or whether it was the after-effects of a bad whooping cough in the winter, Birgitte Madsen does not know:
"But I was very worried she was going to get a lot of seizures that would not be detected if I slept at night." For a while Birgitte therefore put the alarm clock each hours every night so she could check on Christina. Of course, it was terribly tiring never to sleep through the night.
After receiving an Epi-Care epilepsy alarm in mid-March, Birgitte dares to let Christina go to sleep without constant supervision. Birgitte says, "I set the alarm to alert after 15 seconds. The times when I came to Christina's room, she was always awake. I did not notice any false alarms, but I was sometimes alerted early in the morning when Christina moved in bed after awaking.
“It gives me a really good feeling that I am woken up when Christina gets a seizure at night. A sense of security. At the thought that Christina is having a seizure, and I can not help her, I feel very bad.”
Christina was referred to the epilepsy hospital in Dianalund, Denmark, where she was in a period during the 2002 summer vacation. The doctors say that Christina outgrows epilepsy, and they have changed the drug treatment. Although Christina does not get any nocturnal seizures, Birgitte Madsen does not want to miss her epilepsy alarm.
"I want to be sure that I discover a nocturnal seizure. That's why the alarm is always turned on when I go to sleep. Otherwise I would not sleep well”.
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