Did surgery affect your artistic abilities?

...and ask to talk to more than one doctor. My doctor thought that laser ablation was still experimental. Honestly he wanted to go straight to the option with the better success rate without at least trying to see if an ablation would work. He thought doing an ablation would make a resection more difficult. I don't know whether that is or isn't true.

I haven't noticed anything being worse because of the ablation (people have said that I seem better, but that might be because I've been feeling better because so far the surgery has been effective). I can't call myself an artist but I do a lot of writing at work and think my ability to write is just as good. At least I'm not having spells where I suddenly can't remember the next work in the sentence that I was trying to write and then can't remember what I was trying to write.

I would not assume that laser ablation is "safer" than open surgery. It is still fairly new compared to open surgery. Initially it did not have as good as success rates as the open surgery; however, you usually can do open surgery if the laser ablation fails (just would be a major drag to do both!). I know musicians who have not been affected after right temporal lobectomies--harder to say how that translates to art, but you could do a functional MRI and try to paint while they are monitoring you and see if you're using your right temporal lobe when you do it. RTLE does affect visual memory, but you probably already have some impairment in this area if you have RTLE--look at your neuropsych scores. I would be more reluctant to try any surgical technology that has not been around for awhile. Surgeons love their new gadgets--they don't always work out. If you are going to try one of the newer approaches--make sure you are at a place that has been using that tool for years.