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Right Temporal Lobe Brain Surgery to stop seizures.

Thu, 11/13/2008 - 15:10

Hello, My name is Lee. My Daughter, who is 36, started having seizures abou 3 years ago. She has been on many medications, but they do not control her seizures. That is when the Doctors considered her for brain surgery. First, the Doctors tested her on everything to see if she is a good candidate for surgery. Well, it turns out that she is a good candidate. My Daughter's name is Lori. All of her seizures are coming from the right temporal lobe. They have given her a 65% chance of being seizure free. The problem is this... my Daughter is really scared that it will effect her memory even more, or worse, effect her emotions. I would like to get feed back from anyone that has had this surgery. I would like to know the pro's and con's of your experience. I would greatly appreciate this. I am very concerned for my Daughter. 

Thank You!!

Concerned Mom!

Comments

Re: Right Temporal Lobe Brain Surgery to stop seizures.

Submitted by ahardway on Sat, 2008-11-15 - 11:24

Hi Lee. My name is Anna and I am 27 years old. Just like your daughter my seizures statred  3 years ago as well right after I turned 24. Just like your daughter my seizures were caused by an unknown source and my medications are not working. Last year I was considered for surgery and I just recently had surgery done to my Left Temporal Lobe. I was told the same thing that was told to your daughter. i am a perfect canditate because of my age and basic health. I just had my surgery last week (November 4th) and so far I am doing ok. I am still in a litte bit of recovery and I have a huge hole in my head with my stitches and should be getting them off next week.  I have been told that my surgery was very successfull and since i was always considered a "perfect" candidate my recovery will be perfect. If you want to you can send me an e-mail or send me a freind request and you can tell me about your daughter and i will keep you posted on my recovery.  Best of luck! You can even have your daughter keep in touch with me since we are only 11 years apart.

e-mail ahardway81@msn.com.

Hi Lee. My name is Anna and I am 27 years old. Just like your daughter my seizures statred  3 years ago as well right after I turned 24. Just like your daughter my seizures were caused by an unknown source and my medications are not working. Last year I was considered for surgery and I just recently had surgery done to my Left Temporal Lobe. I was told the same thing that was told to your daughter. i am a perfect canditate because of my age and basic health. I just had my surgery last week (November 4th) and so far I am doing ok. I am still in a litte bit of recovery and I have a huge hole in my head with my stitches and should be getting them off next week.  I have been told that my surgery was very successfull and since i was always considered a "perfect" candidate my recovery will be perfect. If you want to you can send me an e-mail or send me a freind request and you can tell me about your daughter and i will keep you posted on my recovery.  Best of luck! You can even have your daughter keep in touch with me since we are only 11 years apart.

e-mail ahardway81@msn.com.

Re: Right Temporal Lobe Brain Surgery to stop seizures.

Submitted by mamasaw on Sat, 2008-11-15 - 12:33
Like you, I'm a mom who has dealt with my daughter's e for awhile now. My daughter is 27, has had e for at least 10 yrs and no control with the meds. She had left temp. lobe surgery on March 5 08 and is doing well. No szs so far. She did not lose any vision that is noticeable. She was only in the hospital for 3 days. It took about a week on pain meds, then tylenol after that. We agonized over the decision. We were scared to say yes, but in the end, we believed we had to try. We trusted our drs. I met another mom in the hospital who's son had the surgery earlier than my daughter. He did great. That was kind of the deciding factor for us. We met and talked with someone who had been through it. Her memory has never been very good, but we do not see any change or worsening of her memory. She is SO MUCH HAPPIER. It's all about the quality of life. She has the hope of a future without these disabling szs. We know there is no guarantee, but, we are so thankful we said yes. She started driving again for the first time in 3 yrs. 2 weeks ago. My suggestions are: 1. Make sure you trust the surgeon. Ask to speak with some of his/her patients who have had this surgery. They should be very understanding of this. 2 If you decide to go ahead with the surgery, make sure you stay ahead of the pain medication when she comes home. Someone will need to be with her all the time for approx. a week. (That's what we did)If they say take every 4 hrs, make sure you take it every 4 hrs. If you wait, the pain can get pretty bad at first, and it takes awhile for the meds to kick in. 3. I'm sure you're wondering about shaving her hair? It's not as bad as you think. They only shaved a small area, right along her hairline. You cannot even tell she had surgery now. Trust me, that part is not even bad at all. 4. The pain at first is bad, but not as bad as she thought it was going to be. Use the pain medication, like I said. 5. As far as emotions, I can't speak to that because your daughters in on the right side as Carries' was on the left. But, like I stated earlier, Carrie is sooooo much better emotionally than before. If nothing else, we would take that over everything else. You just want what's best for you kids, no matter their age. Good luck, I hope it all works out for Lori. I'll be praying for you and her for what is best.

Re: Right Temporal Lobe Brain Surgery to stop seizures.

Submitted by kmd1043 on Sat, 2008-11-15 - 14:20
Hi Lee, my name is Katy and I'm 22 years old. I actually had left frontal lobe surgery, but thought i would share my experience of brain surgery in general. My surgeries were about 6 1/2 years ago and have been seizure free ever since. I was diagnosed with epilepsy at 15 and had complex partial seizures. My seizures got progressively worse and more frequent very quickly. I went through 6 different meds. in a 7 month period with none of them completely stopping my seizures. The doctors told me then that when a person my age goes through that many meds. in that short of time with no real improvements that surgery would be the next option. I had a wada test done and from that they said i was a strong candidate, but would still have to have a preliminary surgery to make sure they could remove the  lesion that was causing things without interfering with my motor function or memory and so on. I had this first sugery 4/8/02 (a week after my 16th birthday) which entailed taking off the top front left of my skull and placing a grid on my brain to map out and monitor where my seizures started and spread to. They did a bunch of tests over that first week and concluded that they could do the second surgery to remove the lesion. That surgery took place 4/15/02 and i stopped having seizures that day. I was in the hospital for another week for recovery. I don't remember a whole lot of pain after leaving the hospital, just more waiting for the swelling to go down. One of the down falls was i developed a staph infection from one of the first two surgeries and had to go have an emergency surgery about a month and a half later. I was in the hospital for about 6 days that time and had to be on antibiotics for two and half months after. Anyway, i never had any memory loss, but i have noticed along with all my family that i really don't have the motivation or drive i used to. It didn't seem very noticeable at first, but everyone says i'm not the same Katy i used to be. I'm not a completely different person, but i know i don't have that go get 'em attitude i used to. Best of luck to your daughter and your family. Let me know if i can be any more help.

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