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SEEG recovery time

Fri, 06/05/2020 - 23:08
Looking for info on recovery from stereotactic EEG placement for surgical planning. Daughter will have this August and wondering about school planning. Doc says 4-6 weeks for her to be ready to return to school, but am wondering what other's experience has bee

Comments

I had EEG's done in 1994

Submitted by birdman on Sat, 2020-06-06 - 22:08
I had EEG's done in 1994 where a surgeon place a couple of "depth electrodes" into the brain for better readings of the temporal lobe.  Then in 2017 I had 10 leads implanted into brain for another EEG.  The EEG in 2017 was to prepare me for implantation of the RNS system which I just had done in 2019 so I had a few more operations.  In all of these surgeries the doctor recommended avoiding heavy physical activity for six weeks.  This made sense and I tried my hardest follow restrictions but slowly made my way to doing regular activities in 4-5 weeks.  I imagine the doctor gives the 4-6 week timing as a precaution so that no one will not be disappointed if it does take this long to recover.  Also your daughter will be off medication and will have seizures during the testing so it is good to plan on a couple of weeks to be sure seizure activity has stabilized.  Still, I think 2-3 weeks after testing your daughter will be ready to get on with school.But if the doctor is doing this EEG for surgical planning then that throws questions into scheduling.  Doctors meet as a team and then doc will do a followup with your daughter to discuss the decisions the team made.  I'm guessing that the "school planning" you refer to is for college.  After high school was a tough time for me as I did not know what to plan on.  Would seizures always be a problem, or could I hope to one day be seizure-free and do any work I wanted?  During my post-high school years I only took some general college courses, had a part time job at SEARS, and I was busy with specialists for many months going through drug trials and testing for surgery.  I didn't plan on any major in college as I wanted to know first what the improvement would be from brain surgery.  It was a hard time to plan.Mike 

Thanks for the feedback. We

Submitted by montymeg on Tue, 2020-06-09 - 23:04
Thanks for the feedback. We got an earlier surgery date, so she should be able to start virtual high school on time which will hopefully allow for a resection later this fall. It is good to hear about someone else's experience. 

 have gone through the

Submitted by RacerX35 on Thu, 2020-06-11 - 23:24
 have gone through the resection, SEEG and an RNS implant.  Resection was done in 2008.  After the resection, I was still having seizures but not as often and lower in intensity.  I had Complex Partial and Simple partial seizures.  I would have about 10 to 14 a day while 3 different meds.  After surgery, I was done to only having Simple Partials and having a cluster  4 - 6 in a day about every 2 to 4 weeks. 10 years later they were trying to figure out why I was still having this activity and I went through a VEEG, then was ent to UCSF for a MEG (Magnetic EsepholGram), went back to UCLA for an SEEG and spent about 2 weeks under observation.  I had about..... I think 9 or 10 depth electrodes implanted.  Never told me what they found but I was then scheduled for an RNS implant.I still have little cluster episodes about once or twice every other month, but apparently the RNS blocks a huge amount of what I feel.  Last follow up, they saw that the RNS was recording about 300+ a day!   I feel some clusters come on about every other month or so, but it is good to know that the RNS is working and blocking so many I could possibly feel.Later,Racer

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