More Information

Julia had a few more spontaneous seizures, and the doctors did some more mapping procedure, so they are now satisfied they have collected enough information.  The SEEG has done what everyone had hoped for - it has provided a more precise location of the initiation point of the seizures.  But in doing this, we have discovered that rather than starting in the front, right temporal lobe, a relatively benign section of the brain (if it is possible to characterize a part of the brain that way!), the seizures are starting in the hippocampus, which is an extremely important area of the brain.  This location is where long term memories are stored, as well as the ability to record new long term memories, and your ability to be spatially aware.  So we are going to have to go through one or two more steps before surgery.  The next step will apparently be an effort to determine to what extent the seizing part of the brain is active or dominant in these particular functions.  If other parts of the hippocampus are dominant, that would be better.  If our part of the hippocampus is dominant, we will have to make some very careful decisions.  At this point, we really don't know, so we have more steps to go through and much more prayer to bring before our Father.

We have learned that based on the good results of our SEEG procedure, another child has already received the same procedure.  It seems everyone here is very excited about the possibilities of having another extremely useful tool in the toolkit to help children with similar issues.