surgery at 40

Wendy,Please email me!&nbsp; <a href="mailto:dfriedman@sbcglobal.net">dfriedman@sbcglobal.net</a> .&nbsp; I too am getting ready for surgery for complex partial seizrues.&nbsp; I too have them every 4-8 weeks and no medication has been able to stop them.I think you and I are in the same boat.&nbsp; Please email me, I would love to hear from you!!&nbsp;Diana

I had surgery at age 50 ... and it was one of the best decisions I ever made!My seizure history is:&nbsp;A grand mal "out of nowhere" in the middle of the night, at age 35 (well, 34.9); fully controlled by a single medication, except during&nbsp;one 36-hour period, three years later,&nbsp;when I forgot to take&nbsp;it (duh!).&nbsp;&nbsp;Then, a few months after that, my seizures "morphed" and I began having complex partials.&nbsp; These, too, were controlled by (an additional) med, for nearly 8 years... at which point complex partials began to occur, again; several&nbsp;other meds were tried, but none&nbsp;was fully successful at controlling them.When surgery was suggested, I resisted ("my brain is my life!")... but I finally agreed that meeting with&nbsp;a specialist,&nbsp;at a first-rate epilepsy center where such surgery&nbsp;might eventually&nbsp;done, was a good idea.With the help of the good folks at braintalk.org ... I figured out what questions I had to ask, to find "the best epilepsy center" (to my satisfaction).&nbsp; I've always been fond&nbsp;of the "get the best you possibly can" approach... and it paid off!After meeting with the director of the epilepsy center that I chose, I decided that&nbsp;getting *evaluated* for surgery was very low-risk, and would settle the question of whether I was even a candidate for surgery.&nbsp; I had, by that point, been unable to drive for about 3 years, and was having multiple seizures weekly, with associated injuries.I went through the evaluation, and it was determined that I was, indeed, a good candidate.&nbsp; A month or so after the evaluation, I had my Final Seizure... thank you, God! &nbsp; A few weeks later, a last pre-surgery test indicated that there was, nonetheless and indeed, a malfunction in my right temporal lobe... which was clearly doing me more harm than good!&nbsp; In light of that (very conclusive) result,&nbsp;we proceeded with the surgery a few weeks later, on a Thursday; the following Monday, I was home...&nbsp;and&nbsp;five months later, I&nbsp;took delivery of&nbsp;my new car!Since then, my medication has been progressively reduced. I'd be on just a single med, at this point, other than personal choice because of some of the psychological side-effects that I&nbsp;experience when *changing* the dosage of the second medication; this just wasn't the right time to go through that, again.Surgery is often not considered until well down the road, because people are scared of it.&nbsp; There are some clinical studies suggesting that patients do better, in terms of their overall life quality,&nbsp;when surgery is considered sooner, rather than spending months or years playing "medication roulette."Here's a news report, from August 2003, on that point... <a href="http://www.thebostonchannel.com/health/2392333/detail.html">http://www.thebostonchannel.com/health/2392333/detail.html</a>&nbsp;... and, a subsequent report, which includes a video interview with a patient: <a href="http://www.thebostonchannel.com/health/2666883/detail.html">http://www.thebostonchannel.com/health/2666883/detail.html</a> .(Neither of the hospitals referenced in those articles, is the one I chose... and, those articles didn't appear until well after my surgery.)&nbsp;