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.