I had been waiting for a call from the neurosurgeon’s office (Dr. Nelson) for quite a few weeks and the phone finally rang yesterday morning.
One of my first questions was why this was necessary, given that Dr. White and I were fully aware what direction we needed to move in. The person on the phone told me that Dr. Nelson meets with all of his patients before scheduling an SEEG, so that’s what we were gonna have to do.
Dr. Nelson works in three different locations in my area: Woodbury, Plymouth, and St. Paul. That last one is the closest, so I said I’d like to schedule my appointment there.
“Well, he only works there one day a month.”
“Oh, no…”
Mind you, that was my inner voice speaking, but the person on the phone might have been able to hear what I was thinking if she’d seen my face. Instead, she explained that he was working there tomorrow [Thursday] and had appointments available at 11:30 and 2:30.
My wife and I drove to St. Paul and got to the office a little before 11:30, Dr. Nelson’s assistant brought us into one of the rooms, and we started discussing the situation before she eventually brought in Dr. Nelson for our consult.
What hadn’t occurred to me up until that point was that Dr. Nelson isn’t part of Minnesota Epilepsy Group—he was working at the John Nasseff Neuroscience Specialty Clinic, so he wasn’t part of that earlier surgical conference, he hasn’t been given a lot of information about me, myself, my brain, and I… so I filled him in on the details as best I could.
The SEEG will give more specific information than the MSI, so they’ll spend some time figuring out exactly where the sensors will need to go (where to put them to get through the skull at what angle, etc.), then I’ll spend 7-10 days in a hospital bed and not be allowed to move a whole lot… I’m hoping I’ll be able to get up and use the bathroom instead of just shoving a bedpan under my hospital gown, but who needs dignity, amirite? He said they’ll put some cuffs on my legs this time to make sure I don’t develop a bunch of clots again, but probably put me on a mild dose of a blood thinner for safety’s sake.
But he didn’t know that I only took a blood thinner for three months after staying in the hospital before. He didn’t know that Dr. White and I already talked about different types of surgeries. He didn’t know that extraction had already been ruled out because it can potentially cause some damage in the process. Given that the problem is in the language center of my brain and I’m currently employed as a proofreader (eyebrows go up, eyes get bigger and “Ohhh…”), I enjoy reading and writing in my free time… my quality of life would diminish significantly if something went wrong, so yeah, that type of surgery is off the table.
Before I can be admitted into the hospital, Dr. Nelson needs to make sure that he’s available, that Dr. White’s available, that the special room in the hospital for SEEG testing is available… so it could take a few months for everything to get in order. He said it might be 2-4 weeks before I hear back from his office, so I still have some more waiting to do, but when I get that call, we should be ready to put my hospital stay for SEEG testing on the calendar. (If that testing is supposed to fall over the weekend of July 26th, which is when my wife and I have tickets to see Nate Bargatze performing standup at the Xcel Center… how badly do I really need to have surgery?)
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