Childhood absence epilepsy pool safety?

[dcyrus]

Hi everyone, I'm new to the site. Late last year my 5 year old daughter was diagnosed with Childhood Absence seizures. They are pretty severe, particularly with sleep deprivation. We started Zarontin which did not control the seizures and switched to depakote which made things much worse. We are playing around with doses at this point just trying to get a handle on it. I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for pool safety equipment. Trying to search the web for some kind of wearable suit or device with a warning. We have a pool and my daughter is a great swimmer but I am so worried about her having a seizure while she is swimming and no one realizing it right away. Since she just stops what she is doing it would look like she is floating. She is never alone in the pool, not even for a second with her diagnosis but I'm still really worried.

 

[C0urt]

is there anything that would make her float face up, unfortunately, a person can drown in about a inch of water, so it is hard to really recommend anything that would help aside from hands on attention.

 

[KatieCoy83]

I read that she shouldn't go in water deeper than the shoulders of whoever is with her.

 

[epileric]

Welcome dcyrus. It sound like your daughters seizures are like the ones I had as a kid (still do).

I grew up with my parents being good friends of a couple who had a pool so we often went swimming at their place. I was allowed to swim (without any special accessories) as long as I didn't go deeper than my neck. As I got older I was allowed to go deeper than my head.