Today was Friday, but even though it wasn’t the day after Thanksgiving, I decided to take the day off from work. That led to me thinking about… a lot of things about brain surgery.
A long, long time ago, I was one of those people who had extremely limited information about epilepsy. I knew about one type of epileptic seizure (grand mal seizures) and one type of brain surgery (resection). Thus, part of the reason why I appreciate National Epilepsy Awareness Month and why I try to share some of that awareness with others.
I’m extremely glad that I now know there’s a wider spectrum of both seizures and surgeries. I’m glad that of all the seizures I’ve had, only three out of how many hundreds over the last 34 years have been grand mal seizures. As for surgeries, the neurosurgeon told me that resection is the most effective kind: if you remove the brain tissue where the seizures start, no more seizures! But that doesn’t make it the best kind, especially for me.
My seizures primarily affect the language center of my brain. Removing a chunk of my brain in that area might eliminate seizures, but removing a chunk of the language center of my brain would have other effects as well. Most likely severely negative effects.
I know I talked about it when building up toward surgery. If I started struggling to remember words all the time, I wouldn’t be nearly as good at telling stories. I certainly wouldn’t be able to write all these blog entries. And I wouldn’t have taken today off from work because it’s extremely unlikely that I’d be capable of being a proofreader anymore.
So I’m glad that my limited knowledge wasn’t accurate. There are more than 40 types of seizures and most of mine haven’t been the grand mal variety. There are multiple kinds of brain surgery that involve implanting something into the body rather than removing something. Getting an RNS device means I can still tell good stories, I can still write blog entries, and I can still take a day off from work. Which is good, because most employers don’t appreciate you taking a long nap in the middle of the afternoon.