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age consideration for surgery
Wed, 01/28/2004 - 14:28Topic: Surgery and Devices
My son is eleven and we have been considering surgery for his seizures. We are wondering if it would be beneficial to wait till he's alittle older or would we get a better recovery now as far as the brain's ability to remap itself. I know the best time would have been when he was much younger but we weren't ready to consider it at that time.
Comments
RE: age consideration for surgery
Submitted by poetrywriter2004 on Mon, 2004-01-26 - 14:58
I agree, you should go along with the doctors and see what you find out. I am not a doctor, but I suffer from Epilepsy, and I know that it is an almost certain possibility that I will have to have surgery myself, and I am almost 21! It would be much better to do it now than wait. I'm sure it would be a lot harder if it were done later in life. I know from experience.
RE: age consideration for surgery
Submitted by Bandcheryl on Wed, 2004-01-28 - 14:28
Kim.I just had the surgery back in Sept. with a very little chance that they would go away. My seizures are on both sides of my brain, but they did the surgery on the right because that's where most of them were coming from. They were hoping that the ones from from my right side were setting off the ones on my left. I went into the surgery knowing that it wasn't a for sure thing that my seizures would go away, but even having that little chance that they would was good enough for me. I would do anything for these seizures to just go away and not come back. In the last two months, though, my seizures have lessoned. I've had 3 in a month and 5 days. I was normally having 3-4 a week. So, whose to say it's my surgery or my med. But. I'm not asking questions, I'm just happy.
RE: age consideration for surgery
Submitted by EpilepsyDotComEditor on Thu, 2004-01-22 - 17:06
Sorry for the long delay in posting this reply. Have you taken any further steps toward surgery for your son? The evidence seems to be that "the sooner the better" is generally true. You may be interested in a couple of articles about surgery that now appear in the "Research News & Notes" section of epilepsy.com. Look for that in the right-hand column of the homepage, just below the "Epilepsy News" feature.