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.