Left Parietal Lobe - surgery

Re: Left Parietal Lobe - surgery

Submitted by quirky on Sat, 2010-02-06 - 18:04

Hi Stacey I did have the surgery on May 22nd 2008 and all was successful :-) I have been reducing my meds for a long time now and in 3 weeks I will be finished with them all altogether :-) Seizure free! My last seizure was the day I admitted myself to the hospital for the actual brain surgery. I remember it so well because it was at the time of hopes and dreams with surgery coming up and I was being hopeful that all would work out just fine. I had no idea that I would be seizure free afterwards, but some improvement I would have been delighted. I feel very lucky! Before the surgery I was having seizures almost every day and that would be a few times a day as well! I suffered from complex partial seizures mainly. I had tonic clonic all the time when my epilepsy started as a child before I was on any meds. But with the meds, I was only having tonic clonic every 2/3 months. It was the complex partial seizures that effected my life. I would suddenly get a strange feeling in my right arm and then would go to my right hand, a numb feeling and at the same time, I would become confused and everything around me becomes hazy and I lose some awareness and cant take in everything that is being said to me at the time. To avoid people staring and wondering what was wrong etc, I used to play dumb basically by not speaking to anyone but maybe nodding my head as if in conversation and the other person doesnt know any better. But the reality was that I would not be able to recall what had been said, I would not be too sure how long it lasted sometimes, it would take a while for me aterwards to feel relaxed and okay again and was very tiresome to try and control the seizures some how without letting people notice anything! I had been taking many medications for 20 years, but nothing would control my seizures fully. By my late 20s i started thinking about brain surgery...started thinking about my future and anyone else's future that could be affected by my epilepsy such as a future family of my own etc. I knew that I would much prefer to take the risk in surgery to have a better quality of life for myself as well as benefit my future children to have a healthy mother to look after them etc and so far all is good! I have no kids yet but my hubby and I are planning on it. Most people who have seizures, are related to the temporal lobe. Parietal lobe is quite rare. I had a lesion found in the mri scan there and my eeg showed that my seizures were originating from there. And being in the language area, I had to have an fmri scan as well to see if i was using any of that area for language usage. It was suspected that I wasnt before the fmri but the doctor needed to be sure of this before going ahead with the surgery. It was found that I dont use the parietal lobe for language at all! I use language elsewhere away from where the lesion was based. It is thought that as a baby I had a stroke either before I was born or not longer after i was born. This is what caused the damage in my brain. I was born with calcium deficiency and my neurologist said that some babies who are born with calciuum deficiency end up with seizures or a stroke, and because my seizures did not start until 10 years later, my doctor said it went into quarantine for 10 years basically which can sometimes happen and then somehow starts firing away and siezures start. And because the stroke happened as a baby, I naturally developed to use another area in the brain for language. I hope all goes well with your evaluation process. You can contact me anytime if you want to talk more or ask me anything. Id be glad to help if i can. But one thing i can say to you now is to try stay positive. This worked for me...and it might just work for you too. but always remember there are no guarantees in life and so what ever happens we must stay positive and that will make things a little easier :-)