I had gamma knife surgery for TLE in 2004

[jeff1958]

When I had my gamma knife surgery done in 2004, I was the first person in WI to have it for temporal lobe epilepsy. As far as my neurosurgeon knows, I'm still the only one to have it that has other health problems like diabetes, 2 heart attacks, bypass surgery and a methicillin resistant staph infection. I wasn't a candidate for a temporal lobectomy because of my other health problems and I got in on a study program with the National Institute of Health. Finally after almost 2 years of waiting, I'm showing some results.
Instead of going into status epilepticus 2 to 4 times a month, I went 60 days last time and I'm counting the days now. I'm up to 25. I'm feeling very good about the possibility of making it longer this period.
I wish I could have had the standard surgery and found out faster if I had good results but with my health, I get what I'm dealt.
Has anyone else had gamma knife surgery for temporal lobe epilepsy? I'd like to know what you think of it. Thank-you Jeff

[Bernard]

Hi Jeff, welcome to the forum!

I've been following your updates at Braintalk and the EFA for a while. I started another thread a while back on the gamma knife and you were the one who emailed me the info in the second post!

So far, I have not run across anyone else at any of the epilepsy forums that has tried the gamma knife.

[jeff1958]

I saw my epileptologist two day ago. He congradulated me on the success so far in recent months. He then said that my MRIs look just like I had a temporal lobectomy. This is really exciting to me and hopefuly to others with temporal lobe epilepsy. Surgery without invasive methods. I have a chance of cancer in the future at some point. I was told that time is far in the future, decades.

For this NIH stuff they want me to keep track of everything going on so I have to check my blood sugars 4 or 5 times a day, record how I feel and any stress I'm under. I keep a log of everything. I hope they can learn something from me and the other 39 people picked for the study.

One day I saw my neurosurgeon and I told him I thought he was an incredably brave man doing his job. He stopped on the way to the examining room and said, " No Jeff, you are the bravest man I've ever met". I'm just going through what I have to. Thanks for reading this. Jeff

[Bernard]

Great news Re: your MRI!

Someone has to be the first to test the waters or no one gets to swim.