Before I had my surgery done in 1987, they were able locate the focal point of my seizures by implanting electrodes through the skull. As I said before, my last seizure was the day before the surgery.and I have been totally off medicine since 1992.

John182 I had surgery on the left temporal lobe in April 1987 and my last seizure was the day before they operated. I have been totally off medicine since December 1992.

After the surgery I was able to go to a Rehabilitation Center and earn a second Associate Degree in Accounting and have been working for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the Office of the Budget since May 1992. I will be retiring later this month.

My seizures were caused by scarred tissue on the left temporal lobe which came from being pushed down steps by a classmate when I was in 8th grade. After seeing several neurologists, I was told I would probably never be controlled by medicine because of what was causing the seizures. I decided to have the surgery and have been seizure-free ever since.

I am adding you to my team.

@A MyEpilepsyTeam Member sorry to hear about your husband's condition, working on the short term memory are of the brain is very risky.
I even forgot I asked this question, meanwhile I learned that it's almost impossible to locate the focal point of a seizure, that's why everyone insists with meds, only huge seizures that last for almost an hour can pinpoint a focal point on the brain, so I think that all this epilepsy surgery thing is just some fake advertising because in real life situation it can't be done. Most people with epilepsy have seizures that last for a minute or so, definitely not enough for a VEEG to pick the source of the problem.
I'm still trying meds, nothing promising so far, as I expected, so I'm still waiting, that's all I can do, till my patience will eventually run out.

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A MyEpile...

So, I’m back. My husband started experiencing serious side effects from his drugs and had a period of increased seizures. They redid an MRI and another memory/psychological test this past fall. The MRI. showed a small increase in the size of the sclerosis and his memory test was again worse (each year it’s been progressive). So he made the decision last week to do laser ablation. Our reasoning…(a) we don’t do anything= his memory will more than likely continue to get worse anyways (b) his sclerosis is bigger…do we wait for more area to need to be removed?! (c) he will continue to have medicine issues and maybe this helps (d) he is very unstable- seizure wise- and just wants a chance at a better quality of life. Things are already bad, memory wise, so I am really praying that this will actually help 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Dear Amy, what you described is my greatest fear at this point, that's why I asked about the memory loss, I heard the story of a man who went to get epilepsy surgery and ended up having lost the ability to make short time memory and could only remember stuff for 20 seconds. The thing that worries me most is that my symptoms evolve whenever I am learning new stuff or doing intense mental work so it kind of pinpoints to that area of the brain. Right now I just have to wait and see how things are progressing, it's like having a car, not knowing what's wrong with it and hope something will break down and maybe be able to fix it later.