The Central Problem with EEGs

When they told me that Jaelyn would *have* to sleep for the EEG, I thought to myself there's no way NO WAY that she will be able to fall asleep on command: this is the child who pops out of bed with a smile and a giggle on almost any day at or before 6 a.m., she hasn't taken a nap since she was two and a half, and on Christmas morning, she pops out of bed at 4 a.m. -- it is BOTH distasteful AND extremely difficult for her to go to sleep on command or during the day; so after I saw the thirty brightly colored wires they had to glue to her scalp, saw the stark, steep, thin medical rolling bed they had her lay on, my tightly clenched gut only knotted itself again -- this had been an exercise in futility.

Can you imagine what I felt then, when, after just two minutes, my beautiful, round-cheeked daughter had relaxed into a smiling deep sleep?