Affects of surgery on personality, abilities, etc.

Re: Affects of surgery on personality, abilities, etc.

Submitted by RTL on Fri, 2011-08-05 - 19:01

I've had right-side surgery and have recounted my experiences and outcome here:

http://users.eastlink.ca/~kehoe/surgery/

I think you'll be able to see my perspective on some of the things that concern your husband.

I'm not in the U.S. so I can't comment on facilities.

Kevin

Re: Affects of surgery on personality, abilities, etc.

Submitted by tropicalpenguin18 on Fri, 2012-01-13 - 21:35

Hello,

I had a right anterior temporal lobe resection last May. Although left and right temporal lobe surgeries are different because of the language strip and some other factors, I can offer you my experience. I had a really hard time making a decision. If you and your husband's experiences are similar to mine, know that the decision-making stage is the most painful and stressful part of the process--it gets better. Surgery has had an incredibly positive effect on my life. I feel like my cognition is clearer and my mood feels more focused. It was like going to the eye doctor feeling like you could see fine, but then having the doctor adjust the lens and asking, "is that clearer?" And suddenly everything is brighter and crisper. Like your husband, I was really worried about memory before making a decision. I'm a student (and probably will be for another seven or eight years, as I want to go to med school), so my world really depends on the ability to retain information. Although I was in a good place cognitively before the surgery, my neuropsych evaluation scores actually improved after the surgery. My neuropsychologist thought that it was because my brain was 'freed up' from having to deal with seizures. That was my individual experience, though, which my neuropsychologist predicted before the surgery. Therefore, I think it's really important for you and your husband to talk with his neuropsychologist after his WADA test and neuropsych evaluations and get his or her read on what the memory risks are. As for personality, I feel more myself than I ever have in my life. I feel like I can designate my full energy to the positive aspects of myself that I want to nurture. I also do not lose days to feeling 'seizure-y' or 'not quite myself.' I think the most useful resource that my doctor gave me was someone who had had virtually an identical surgery to my own. He gave me the answers to detailed questions about personality and memory that I couldn't have gotten from anywhere else. I got my surgery done at the Mass General Hospital in Boston. I continue to be absolutely in awe at how incredible all the doctors I worked with were and I would thoroughly recommend it for surgery. I also worked there as an intern, so have seen how cutting-edge all of the research that is happening there is. My doctors are such incredible people and communicators, as well, which I think is equally important. Good luck with your journey with this.