9 Months

It has been nearly nine months since my last seizure. SO HAPPY AM I!!!

I don't have any clear-cut answer as to why I haven't had any... good weather, low stress, VNS... who knows. Probably a combination of factors...

Kids Speak Up! on Epilepsy

From the Epilepsy Foundation:

50 Scholarships Awarded for Kids Speak Up! 2008
Kids Speak Up! is a national conference for youth leaders with epilepsy. It provides 7-16 year olds with a unique opportunity to educate elected officials and staff about the disease. It’s also the first chance for many participants to speak out and meet other youth with epilepsy.

Chris Ames, a 10-year-old participant, was typical of many at last year’s event. He strode confidently to the stage on the first night of the conference and said, “I’m not ashamed to have epilepsy. I don’t care what people say; I just keep going. I’m a one-man army!”

Fifty families will receive scholarships to attend Kids Speak Up! 2008. Scholarships provide funding for one parent and one child’s travel, lodging and other expenses. They are sponsored through an educational grant from Abbott Laboratories.

Kids Speak Up! will be held March 30 - April 1, 2008 in Washington, DC.

Please contact Joseph LaMountain at jlamountain@efa.org if you have any questions regarding the event.

Three Cups of Tea

Very cool article. Super brief summary. Guy's sister dies from epilepsy. He decides to honor her by taking her necklace to the top of K2. Nearly dies. Saved by some locals. Inspired to build schools for children. The article is great. I'm planning on reading his book: Three Cups of Tea

Over Six Months

It has been over six months now since my last seizure. A very nice feeling indeed... Now, if I can just make it... say... 50 more years. Wish me luck!

UCB & Epilepsy Advocate Scholarship

UCB and EpilepsyAdvocate have a scholarship program as well. Fortunately, this one has a deadline of May 1. If you are interested, check out their scholarship page.

The Epilepsy Advocate website has a lot of other great information on epilepsy as well.

Kudos to UCB for their research in epilepsy medications and their support for people living with epilepsy.

Epilepsy Scholarship

I just got this notice from Pfizer regarding their Epilepsy Scholarship. The applications have to be in by March 1st. So if you are interested, click fast!

Kudos to Pfizer for providing these scholarships to deserving students and for creating some great meds to help people with epilepsy.

Hope...

Long time no post...

It was quite an eventful Christmas for my family and I. We traveled to Finland to visit our friends over the Christmas and New Years holiday. It was a spendid trip and we were able to tour around the beautiful country for nearly 2 weeks.

One of our worries going into the trip was that the stress from jet-lag might trigger seizures. So before leaving, we asked Dr. Dean (Epilepsy Foundation of NC) her recomendation on the best way to deal with the change in schedule. She told me to keep the same medication schedule regardless of the local time. Being that Finland is 7 hours ahead of the US East Coast, it was a bit difficult, but not impossible. Thankfully it worked and I did not have a single seizure on the trip!

Merry Christmas!!!

I wish you all a very wonderful Christmas!!!

Epilepsy Shot

I got my yearly flu shot today... if only they had a yearly epilepsy shot... one can hope? right?

PET Analysis Report

I finally got a copy of the report from my P.E.T. scan. The good Dr.s at WFUBMC provided me with this:

FINDINGS:
There is evidence of prior right frontal craniotomy. An area of encephalomalacia is identified deep into the craniotomy site. No metabolic activity is identified in the region of the encephalomalacia. The remainder of the brain demonstrates normal and symmetric activity. No addiional areas of hypo or hypermetabolism.
**************CONCLUSION**********************
1. Status post right frontal craniotomy with underlying encephalomalacia.
2. Otherwise normal and symetric metabolic activity within the cerebral and cerebellar hemisphers bilaterally.
**********************************************

Wow, so that is a lot of stuff. So I looked up all the funky M.D. words (and provided links for your pleasure) and determined that:
1. I have had brain surgery before and there is scar tissue.
2. My brain does not have any crazy activity with regards to blood flow.
3. Both sides of my brain are functioning in the same way.
4. No tumors detected.
5. I still have idiopathic epilepsy - that is: the M.D.s don't have a clue as to why I am having seizures.

Blogger V. Squirrels

Evidentlly I'm not the only Epilepsy blogger that took time to blog about their squirrel issues. Sicilianna, a My.Epilepsy.Com blogger, writes this:

I woke up at 4:30am to the sound of some sort of critter making noise in the ceiling. Last February we captured a family of flying squirrels that had nested in our attic. I fear some little cousins may have heard there was a vacancy and taken up residence. Once I realized the rolling of acorns and scurrying of tiny feet was not going to stop any time soon, I gave up on falling back to sleep and decided to get out of bed.

Check out her blog: Sicilianna's blog : Always move forward! My Life (So Far!) With Epilepsy.

Off Topic: Blogger V. Squirrels

I arrived home yesterday to the unmistakable sound of a Squirrel in the wall. Yes, a squirrel stuck in an interior wall of the house - scratching and clawing at the wall in a vain effort to climb the Sheetrock. Why unmistakable? Because the same thing happened last year - one of the neighborhood squirrels managed to make his way into the attic and then, due to an odd architectural feature of the house, managed to slip down one of the gaps into the wall.

So I proceeded to listen carefully against the wall, make a guess as to which section of the wall in which the squirrel was trapped, then cut a hole in the wall. Once the hole was opened, Ryan and I gave fair warning to Christa that she may want to exit the room for a moment while we extracted the vicious beast. After a few minutes of chasing the squirrel around the room, I managed to bag him and then let him out the front door.

I was pleased with the work until I went upstairs to cover the hole and heard a second squirrel scratching away in a different area of the wall. Ug. Same routine as before, except this extraction required two holes as my first guess was wrong. After the beast was released, I covered up the holes and called it a night.

This morning I awoke to the dreaded sound of scratching. One of the little beasts was trapped again... this time in yet another section of wall. I did not have time to get him out this AM, so he is still there. Hopefully I can get him out tonight...

Brain Radiator

I'm not sure if you will see any clinical trials on this little gizmo, but it is still pretty cool. The idea is that by cooling the brain, you can reduce seizures. I found this at the New Scientist Invention Blog.

In severe epileptic fits, over-excited brain cells fire at such a rate they can raise the brain's temperature in that area. This causes more nerves to fire in a feedback mechanism that makes the fit even worse. One way of preventing such escalating fits is to cool the area of the brain that is susceptible.

So Takashi Saito and colleagues at Yamaguchi University in Japan have developed a heat pipe that is surgically implanted into the affected region of the brain and then connected to a heat sink on the outside of the skull. This device carries heat away from the affected area, keeping it cool and reducing the chances of severe epileptic fits in future.

Here is an image from the patent application:

Get some sleep

This article I found on Epilepsy.Com contains some interesting info on sleep & epilepsy. Check it out.

Off Topic: Excuses To Miss Work

As if I didn't have enough to do... I started yet another blog. Excuses to Miss Work. My hope is that this might actually be useful to someone. ;) As opposed to my other blogs with topics such as: an obscure furniture maker from the Victorian era, my own ramblings about epilepsy, random philosophical quotes, family vacations to Oahu, family vacation to Finland, and contributing to a blog dedicated to solving the worlds problems "one beer at a time".

PET....

I'm still awaiting the report from Baptist Hospital regarding my PET scan. I'll probably call tommorow to find out what is taking them so long.

PET Scan Pics

Here are a selection of my 147 PET scan images that they put on a CD for me. I can't really tell much from them... so I will have to wait for a Dr. to analyze them for me.

Epilepsy Awareness Day

The local epilepsy awareness group with which I participate, NC EASE (North Carolina Epilepsy: Awarness Support Education) has organized an Epilepsy Awareness Day in November:

NC EASE and the Epilepsy Institute of North Carolina invite you to join us for our first annual Epilepsy Awareness Day.

The event will take place at the Epilepsy Institute, 1311 Westbrook Plaza Dr. Winston-Salem. From 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. on November 3rd, 2007.

There will be activities for children.

We will have a number of presentations and information on the following topics:
* Epilepsy and seizure disorders.
* First Aid instructions for seizures
* Tests for epilepsy
* New treatments for seizures
* Clinical trials for new treatments for epilepsy
* College scholarships for people with epilepsy or their family members
* Epilepsy support dogs

If you have any questions please contact us via email: coordinator@epilepsysupportnc.org

One month...

I am seeing my Dr. today. Hopefully the PET scan will provide some information of use. I have tried looking through them myself, but am obviously not qualified... as I can't tell a thing by examining the images. I'll try to get some posted soon.

My last seizure was exactly 1 month ago. Hopefully I can make it a few more decades without another. Wish me luck!