Give me my brain, or give me... ?
It took like, five years for my Wonderful Neurologist to start suggesting surgery. Now my new neuro is suggesting it too. But he started with 'resection', aka removing the part of my brain that's extra sparky, and I gotta say I hate that idea.
Removing part of the brain might be the right choice for many people, and I'm happy for them. I worked with a woman who got a temporal lobectomy and became completely seizure-free. (She wasn't okay, but she wasn't seizing anymore.)
All I can think about when I hear that is Rose Kennedy, and the thousands of other people who had big chunks of their brains removed without their informed consent, and I absolutely Will Not.
And he emphasized that I might be better off without the part that's causing seizures, especially since I'm currently on three medications. And they have very good surgeons, and they can use lasers to just burn a little bit of brain off. And I gotta say, the more he tried to un-freak me out, the more freaked out I got.
We talked about the testing they do beforehand instead, and the healing from that (he insists it's minor, but he's not the one getting holes drilled in his skull). He barely mentioned other choices, like fun medical devices or that giant-magnets-alongside-your-head study that was going on a while back.
This conversation felt a bit like him trying to convince me that partial lobectomies are just fine, really! And I don't trust him very much anymore.