The journey has begun...

Today Alicia got admitted to the hospital in Lund to start her ketogenic diet. After around a year of seizures and numerous changes of medicines we felt that it was the right thing to try this out. We really hope that this treatment will work for Alicia and that it will reduce her seizures and best of all that they will stop..

Today they took some test on Alicia and she started the new meals. The first couple of days she will get all the meals as fluids and then we will learn how to prepare the food for her.

Since Alicia is not sick but we still need to visit the hospital a couple of times every day this first week we were lucky to be able to stay at the Ronald McDonald house a few minutes walk from the hospital. It's like a hotel were we have our own room with our own bathroom. There are a lot of common areas with couches, a kitchen were we can cook our own food, game room with a ping pong table and a pool table and one room filled with toys.

It feels like this week will be a lot easier to get through now when we can stay here!

Here is a short description from Wikipedia:

The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that in medicine is used primarily to treat difficult-to-control (refractory)epilepsy in children. The diet forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates. Normally, the carbohydrates contained in food are converted into glucose, which is then transported around the body and is particularly important in fuelling brain function. However, if there is very little carbohydrate in the diet, the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies. The ketone bodies pass into the brain and replace glucose as an energy source. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the blood, a state known as ketosis, leads to a reduction in the frequency of epileptic seizures.

Daddy and Alicia started the day of with a nice nap :)

When we got back to the room this afternoon Alicia was in a good mood and played with her toys for a little bit.

A tired girl tucked in to bed. Sweet dreams princess!