Right Frontal Lobectomy

My daughter's situation is almost identical to your sons. Just today she had her right frontal lobe resected.  Can you please tell me how your son is doing today?

I would love to give you any information I can. I have found very few people who have had right frontal lobe surgery. My son also was diagnosed with cortical dysplasia. My son was completely healthy and had no medical problems at all (total normal childhood) until September 1, 2005 when he was 5. He was riding in the van with our nanny and he started having a grand mal seizure and was rushed to Riley Hospital in Indianapolis Indiana. When we got to the hospital, they were able to stop the seizure and said a lot of children have seizures and they would give him medication and he would be fine. They kept him in the hospital for observation and he started having seizures every few minutes - they gave him every seizure medication out there but nothing would stop the seizures. When he would have a seizure his face would flush, heartrate would skyrocket, his arms would stiffen or make a movement repeatly (if he was doing something with his hands when the seizure started his hands would continue that movement during the seizure). He would always be awake and conscience during the seizures but they never lasted very long - about one minute(except for the first one in the van). To make the story a little shorter - they put him into a penobarb coma because his body was shutting down and medications weren't helping. While he was in the coma they were able to detect cortical dysplasia with numerous MRI's and tests. He had his entire right frontal lobe removed on September 23, 2005. I have a lot of good news post surgery!! He is doing amazingly well. After surgery, they slowly brought him out of coma and he went through two months of agressive physical and occupational therapy. That was mostly because of the coma though and not the surgery. Right after surgery his main mental deficits were "word finding difficulty", he knew what he wanted to say but couldn't think of the word, short term memory, lack of inhibitions (example - he knew the stove was hot but nothing would stop him from touching it), concentration/focus difficulties, behaivor, and being in social or busy situations. It is less than one year post surgery and he is doing better everyday. Now we still struggle with short term memory, keeping his life structured and using charts helps a lot. The inhibitions and word finding difficulties are much much better. The social and behaivor aspects have been helped a lot in the last few months after our neurosurgeon put him on Ritalin. She said most children with any frontal lobe problem need some kind of ADD type medicine post surgery. That has worked wonderful. He is keeping up with his class in school. He has an aide to help keep him focused and on task. He is in a regular first grade class and loves school. Best of all, when he was in the hospital right before they put him into a coma, they had recorded 100 seizures that day and he had stopped breathing twice and he was on every seizure medication they could put him on and they weren't helping at all, since surgery he has not had ANY seizures at all. Sorry this is so long, but I have not been able to find anybody who has had any issues with right frontal lobe! If you would like to talk or have anymore questions at all, please ask! I would also love to know more about your son, what his seizures are like, how long he has been having them, is he on any seizure medication. Dalton is on Keppra, Trileptal ,and Ritalin right now. He was on Topamax also when we first got home from the hospital but has since been weaned from that one. I'm not sure the medications are doing anything since they didn't do anything in the hospital but the doctors want to keep him on them for awhile. Shelby