Amygdalohippocampectomy. Or crash course in brain surgery.

reply to post by webpirate


I have epilepsy and have to take a massive amount of Dilantin everyday...medication seems to be the ticket for me, but I also know I am very fortunate in this regard.

My blessings are increased when I hear about storys like yours...so thank you for sharing and posting about this.

I finally got a video posted on my old post..so check it out...it's pretty interesting.

reply to post by jerryznv


I'm glad you found that video. That's one of the most interesting things I have ever seen! And I've seen a lot! The neurosurgeon seemed as amazed at times as Hawkeye did. Even admitted it!

Do you know where your seizures arise from? The part of your brain? Mine are obviously coming from my left temporal lobe...as I've stated. Around 30% or so of people with temporal lobe epilepsy don't get relief from medicines. I first tried Keppra. For 6 months. Got to such a high dose it started giving me bad headaches. We then switched it to Lamictal. That worked about as well as a cat trying to bury it's own crap on a frozen lake. Tried it for 9 months.
I actually got the most relief from the Keppra at the second to highest dose I tried. Which was 1500mg twice a day. After the Lamictal didn't work, and my neurologist wanting to try the vagal nerve stimulator I asked to go back to the Keppra at that dose. I made it 2 months seizure free. Still not enough to be cleared to drive by the doctors though. It doesn't seem to have even worked as well this time as before. That's when I found this project I started this own.

I'm really hoping for this as a learning experience for me too. If they aren't as open with information as I want them to be I'm gonna press for more! I can be very annoying that way when I want to be! The thing I'm interested the most in at first at least is the Wada test for language. The video you posted stated language skills are on the left side, but the way I understand it is it's on the dominant side, which is the left for most people. I really wanna see what happens when they put the left side of my brain to sleep. I know I already have had some minor issue with words recently....forgetting the specific word or calling something something else. Sometimes I realize it, sometimes not.

I'm the type who would hang out as a ghost in my own autopsy room just to hear the results.

reply to post by webpirate


I am just starting to understand more about the brain(the pysiological side of it anyway)...the mind on the other hand is a complete mystery to me. I am a Social Science major at a small university and psychology is one of the major courses of study for my degree. Although I can't spell and spell check is the devil.....but I do know a bit about the brain...some from my own experiences with seizures...and the educational variety.

My seizures are seemingly cause by lesions on the rear of my cerebrium and I have had three surgerys to remove what they feel like they (neurosurgeons) can remove. Without going through a very risky procedure, like a split brain procedure, I am not probably ever going to stop having seizures and because I have both petite and grand mal seizures, there is a pretty good risk of not making it through a grand mal one of these days.

For the most part, finding an exact cause for epilepsy is like finding a needle in a hay stack...sometimes they get lucky, but for the most part the illness requires some pretty drastic measures...as your finding out now.

Some get lucky and their seizures get considerably better with medication, I am not one of the lucky ones. Although medication does help with the frequency of the seizures, it does little or nothing about how bad they are, or how long they last (often now up to 10 minutes).

It seems the brain is a mystery and the more they find out, the more mystery there is that surrounds it. Maybe with new advancing science there will come a miracle, but until then, you said it best when you said it sucks!

reply to post by jerryznv

Yeah. It's usually hard to say. A large percentage of seizures have an unknown etiology, or unknown cause. It's even possible the seizures themselves caused some of the scar tissue you have/had.

10 mins is pretty long. Have you ever been status? Or one seizure right after another?

On a related note.....I hate when I wake up at 11 AM, and I'm standing in front of my house in the middle of my driveway half dressed in the pouring rain with no clue of what's going on......

And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
And if there is no room upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

"There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark."

OK...let's all go off and have brain surgery! Well...at least the initial testing for it.
Anyone?
Anyone?
OK...looks like it's just me then. As long as I can get through airport security I guess....

Seems sort of unfair to me though, since my best friend died from a brain tumor 11 years ago...

I'll try to keep everyone updated on how it's going. Especially if they are gonna cut me open in the next couple of weeks.

I'll leave with this...in the immortal words of that great philosopher Ozzy:

I love you all! Goodnight!

...some more than others though!