What's Your Why+The Golden Rule=A Happy Life

 Man, life is hard at times. Have you ever thought, why live it? I’ve asked myself this question many times, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. I think to myself, why do I work so hard to have a family? Why do I live gospel principles? Why does Kristi and I work full time with opposite schedules with a baby? Why did we buy a home (#30YearsInDebt)? What’s my why? What’s your why? What goals do you have? Have you found your why?

                I think we see our society turning to the way it is for multiple reasons, but I think the biggest reason is because a lot of us haven’t found our “Why” and have forgotten of the Golden Rule. We all grow up in different circumstances and different environments that shape us to who we become but I think we are forgetting that good ole’ Golden Rule in Matthew 7:12, “…do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” You don’t have to be religious to agree that we should apply this into all of our lives. This doesn’t mean you have to give into what other people believe, but to simply be nice to each other, especially yourself. 

                Ever since I married Kristi, I was introduced to the radio station, K-Love. I’ll admit, I listen to is sometimes. That might sound funny considering I often listen to rock and other genres but something that has stuck with me was when the radio host stated, “Find something to live for, something great enough to die for.” This can go for many things, living your life for your family, your Savior, the love of your life, anything really, but if we follow that Golden Rule along with it, I feel that our lives and society would be a brighter and happier place to be in.

                My “Why” is based all around by personal beliefs. I do believe in my Savior. I do believe that there is life after this life. I do believe that there aren’t just hard times in this life that we have to deal with for no reason. I do believe that we will meet the love ones that have passed on. Though others may not have the same beliefs, we can all still get along and have a good time together. I think that’s where we need to make sure we all have our “Why” in place. Why do you wake up each morning and go to work? Or perhaps, why do you sleep in the morning to work at night? Why do you decide to do the things you do? Who is it for? What is it for?

                Life is short. I don’t know about you, but I think we need to get outside more often, befriend others, and get some fresh air and enjoy the life around us. Go outside with family or friends and have a BBQ. Look up to the sky at night and marvel in the beauty. Look at the scenery that is all around us. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you stand for, demarcate or republican, pro gun control or not, pro life or choice, religious or atheist, pro gay marriage or traditional, we’re all human’s after all. I say we make it a point to be nice to each other, it’ll rub off to others. Life would be so much more enjoyable. I think these are some of the biggest ways we can lower the tragedies of these shootings and simply be a better place to live in. We can get caught up in the same mundane things of our daily routine where we can, in a way, get cabin fever and forget the good things in life. If that’s the case, lets change it. At the end of the day, we just need to find a way to better our lives and the lives of those around us. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

Brain Surgery Finalized

Amongst graduating with my associates from the LDS Business College, I got the phone call that we will be doing brain surgery on May 27^th 2015. Let the countdown begin!  

Because of everything that has been happening lately with the surgeries being in place and graduating from school, I’ve been really worried about finances. I’ve had to take out loans to pay for college. I’m behind on some medical bills because of all of the doctors’ appointments, testing, and the VNS surgery. Now that I am out of school I will be needing to start paying off my loans but there’s an issue, I’m going to have brain surgery! So I will be in the hospital for quite some time and recovery will probably take 4-6 weeks. These surgeries will rack up a lot of debt as well. I decided to start a GoFundMe account. I went in better detail on what is going on and why I decided to start this. All I can ask is for you to read what I wrote, consider donating, and share this with your friends. Here's the link, 
gofundme.com/fts4k8

Chp. 3 The Waiting Game

I apologize for the delay, I’ve been waiting to hear back from the hospital on when we’ll do the surgery, that’s right, we’re doing it!...

My appointment with my neurosurgeon, Dr. House, went well. Those appointments are always a lot to take in. After appointments like these I feel emotionally, mentally, and physically drained. Have you ever had doctor’s appointments like that? It sure is fun… haha

My parents and I met with Dr. House for a second time because there were a lot of questions we wanted to clarify before saying yes to doing the brain surgeries, yes plural. At this point in my “journey” to find a better way to fight epilepsy, there is a lot of uncertainty on what we will do in the future. What I mean is we just don’t have that much information on why and where the seizures are taking place. We have a general idea, the left side of my brain, where all the trauma from the surgeries occurred but that’s about it.

Waiting for doctors can be tiring... haha

There might be a total of 3 brain surgeries in the near future. Right now I am waiting to hear back from the hospital on scheduling a brain surgery where they will place 60-80 leads on my brain with wires that will come out of my skull and attach to a computer, there at the hospital. They close everything up but leave a small hole so that the wires can come out and attach to the computer. They’ll wake me back up and after a couple days (depending on how I’m feeling) they will trigger seizures and record their findings. After we have sufficient recordings Dr. House will go back in and take off all of the leads and close me back up.

Right now things are kind of “hanging in the balance.” I say this because we don’t quite know what we will find until we are in and doing the surgery. From past experience this is what I think will happen,

First-We will do the surgery with the 60-80 leads to learn about my seizures

Second-Then I will have a 4-6 week recovery

Third-In-between these 4-6 weeks there will be a conference with my neurologist, neurosurgeon, and other doctors to review my history and the findings from surgery and discuss what the best next step should be 

Fourth-Then we will learn if the Neuropace device would be a benefit for me or not.

So here we are, in the best part of life’s challenges, testing our patience! I will strive to post each Monday to keep you up to date and while we wait, share past experiences.

Chp. 2 Neurosurgeon Appointment Results...

For those who may not know me, I wrote a brief blog titled, "A Brief Prologue" to give a quick overview on what I went through with cancer and some of the side-effects. It might help connect the dots on what this blog is all about.

My appointment with Dr. House was very informative and tiring in a way. Whenever I go to these appointments I receive so much information that it’s physically, mentally, and emotionally draining! He talked about how I have 2 different types of seizures in 2 different locations in my brain. The issue we are having now is that we don’t know if the seizures are triggered on their own or if perhaps a seizure occurs in one part of my brain that then triggers the other to go off.

I had many questions for him because I wanted to know what the risks are. One of my biggest fears on having the surgery is if it would damage my speech and cognitive thinking, like my previous ones did. I asked for a rough percentage on how the surgery would affect me and he said that I’d have about 20-25% chance that my speech would be affected but even if that happened, he thinks that it’d take me 4-6 weeks to regain it back. He also doesn’t think that my memory would be affected. This made me a lot more confident on actually doing the surgery.

At the appointment I learned what exactly they’d do in hopes to reduce the seizures with the Neuropace. From what I understood, there would be 2 different brain surgeries. First, they would attach these “leads” onto my brain, where there has been the most activity shown from previous tests. The leads would be attached directly onto my brain and I would have a temporary hole in my head so that the wires could come out and attach to the computers. This would last about a week to monitor the activity. They would then go about triggering seizures to get a more precise reading on where and what is triggering the seizures. Once they have found the exact locations, they would attach the Neuropace device onto my brain and then close up the hole completely. I never thought I’d have a “soft spot” again…

I’m still taking it somewhat slow to “get my ducks in a row” to make sure I do feel that this is right. I don’t mean any dis-respect towards Dr. House because he is a great doctor, but I’m going to ask for my neurosurgeon’s opinion from Duke Hospital on having the Neuropace implanted or not. Dr. Fuches, my neurosurgeon from Duke, operated on me twice and saved my life so I guess you could say that I respect his opinion! 

I’ve been very blessed to have the Lord’s guidance through everything in the past and present. Sometimes I haven’t quite understood why He has wanted me to take certain turns at first but as I’ve followed His guidance, I have been well taken care of and that is what I will do as I decide on this operation or not.

Chp. 1 COMING SOON: Neurosurgeon Appointment 3/16/15

For those who may not know me, I wrote a brief blog titled, "A Brief Prologue" to give a quick overview on what I went through with cancer and some of the side-effects. It might help connect the dots on what this blog is all about. 

I’ve been feeling anxious the past week. My neurologist and neurosurgeon had a meeting this past Monday to talk about my case about controlling my seizure activity. My neurosurgeon’s office at the University of Utah Hospital called me Monday morning, after their meeting, to schedule an appointment with Dr. House to discuss options. I was surprised how fast they wanted to see me! I’m meeting with him this upcoming Monday, 3/16.

My neurologist, Dr. Afra, told me of a new brain surgery where they implant a device on the brain in hopes to stimulate the brain. It’s called Neuropace. It was recently approved to be used in the U.S. this past November. My seizures have reduced very little since I got the Vagus Nerve Stimulator device implanted nearly a year and a half ago, so I figured I could have them look into Neuropace simply out of curiosity. I basically left it at that so when I got the phone call for the appointment to see Dr. House a few weeks later, it shocked me a little bit because I nearly forgot about it!

When the possibility of another brain surgery is ever brought up, I get tense and nervous and I have flashbacks on waking up from the two previous brain surgeries being partially paralyzed, 50% blind, speech and reading impediments, and so on. After I think about all of that, why would I do it again? The difference between then and now is that I actually can decide to go through with the surgery or not.

The reason I’m actually considering surgery is for a few reasons. First, I’m on my 8^th anti-seizure medication. The medications help to a degree because if I didn’t have the medication, I’d be having grand-mal seizures all of the time. In the past 4 months I have had between 4-5 complex partial seizures each month and this week alone I have had 3. I’m grateful they’re not grand-mal seizures but none the less, they are still seizures. I’ve also thought about doing the surgery this year because I’ll be graduating with my associates in less than a month. I mention this because school wouldn’t be a hindrance. Another reason I’m considering it is because it might not be as invasive of a surgery like the others. I might be wrong, I’ll find out tomorrow. I mean, brain surgery is brain surgery but my assumption is that it wouldn’t take 14hrs or 6hrs like the other two did.

I’ll admit, I get impatient with these seizures at times. Usually, I can control myself but when they occur too much and too often, I do desire some type of change. We’ve all asked ourselves, “Why me?” Sometimes at least right? I get that way when I wake up from a seizure or when it causes me to be sick for the rest of the day. Don’t get me wrong, I’m almost always happy but these do get me down. Maybe it’s selfish of me but stuff like these seizures have been happening for the past 12 years and it would be very nice to get them more under control. Wish me luck! And I will let you know how the appointment goes tomorrow!

A Brief Prologue

Before I start this blog I wanted to write a little about my history so that when you read my future posts, it will all make sense. My name is Jordan Smith. Early in 2003, I started having minor seizures. They were so minor that I had no idea what they were, nor did anyone else, simply because there was very little outward signs. In late October 2003 I was eating breakfast and when I grabbed the orange juice to fill my cup, I had a seizure but this time it was more serious. It wasn’t a grand-mal seizure but it caused me to simply pause and I couldn’t do anything, and my mind was blank. Because of this, I poured the orange juice all over my French toast! My parents noticed this and we went to the doctors. They scheduled me to have an MRI on November 2, 2003.

On November 2, 2003, when I was 13, I was diagnosed with brain cancer. If you’re curious on the type, it was a pilocytic astrocytoma. The tumor was so large that they operated on the very next day of finding it. It was 8x6x6cm on the left side of my brain. The first operation was 14 hours long. Besides the fact that I had a massive tumor, my body was in great health, thankfully.

The main side-effects were blindness in the right half of each eye, aphasia (the loss of speech and comprehending language), short term memory loss, cognitive thinking challenges, and I fell back to a 3^rd grade reading level.

Roughly 6 months after the 1^st brain surgery we found a cyst growing and taking the space of the original tumor. We continued to watch the cyst for another year and a half in hopes of it going down, but it didn’t. I had the strong impression that we needed to operate again to remove it all. The doctors agreed and on December 13, 2005 we operated again. They were able to remove it all and I’ve been cancer free ever since, but there was similar side-effects like the first surgery. Within an hour after my second brain surgery, I had a stroke which let me paralyzed on the right side of my body. Thankfully, I was able to regain almost all major movement within a year.

A lot has happened since these 2 surgeries. My epilepsy is still lingering and that is what I am trying to control now. I'd like to share my experiences that are going on now and ones from the past.