I was writing yesterday about Sam's second febrile seizure and posted info on them from the NIH and the Mayo Clinic.

It was armed with a stack of printouts of such information that I addressed the issues of these seizures and how they are treated here.

Sam... more

As I was saying...

Sam had his first febrile seizure at eighteen months of age, scared the beegeezus out of his father and me, then recovered. The tonsillitis that brought it on was treated with antibiotics and he responded well and quickly.

Mark and I took longer. When I started researching the condition, that set me back even more:

About a third of children who have a febrile seizure will have another one with... more

Continuing on about febrile seizures ...

There's a genetic component to convulsions that come with fever, so someone in Sam's bio background must have been familiar with them. Mark and I were not, so were completely unprepared for what was the most frightening moment of our lives.

Somewhere in the back of my mind there was a flicker of awareness, but the sight of our then 18-month old son going rigid, then twitching spasmodically, then turning blue as his breathing stopped completely... more

Some new warnings about baby formula are surfacing in Scotland. A report over the weekend suggests that extra precautions are necessary in preparation and highlights new guidelines aimed at lowering the risk of food poisoning in babies.

The advice has been issued by food standards watchdogs amid mounting concern that formula milk is being contaminated with salmonella and other potentially deadly bacteria.

... Many parents make up a day's worth of formula milk,... more

Just came across this report that will give international adopters something else to worry about.

As if there aren't already enough 'unknowables' when it comes to our kids, a study conducted by a professor of maternal and child health and epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, has been published in the July issue of "Pediatrics" that is suspicious of a link between slow neurodevelopment and prenatal exposure to the pesticide DDT and its byproduct, DDE.

DDT... more

A number of items relating to health have grabbed my attention lately. The first concerns kids and asthma:

One in three fatal asthma attacks worldwide involves a child with a mild form of the disease, and nearly half of all parents are unaware of the risk, according to a global survey presented Wednesday.

The report by the European Academy of Allergology and Clinical Immunology said the findings exposed a critical information gap between doctors... more