The Journey is Almost Over

We had our 10 month check up after Byron's hemispherectomy.  This is the first time we have seen his neurologist since the surgery on November 4, 2017.

She reviewed the MRI and the overnight EEG and confirmed what we suspected - Byron is seizure free! At least for now, and hopefully forever.

We are going to begin to ween off all medications starting today so that by the one year anniversary of the surgery, he will no longer be on any seizure medicine.

Then we will do one more overnight EEG to confirm that even without medication, he is seizure and ESES free.

She also asked several things of us: if Bob and I would speak to other patients and parents going through the same thing, if Byron would speak to a large conference of nurse practitioners in a few months, and if Byron would consider being in one of the commercials for the hospital called "Amazing Things Are Happening Here."  We said we would be willing to consider all and to stay in touch.

She also told us that because of Byron, she spoke to the director of the hospital about being more aggressive in letting people know that the hospital does this type of surgery.  Last year we told her that when we were first looking for hospitals for this surgery, Columbia never came up on list-serves, parent groups or seizure blogs.   She said then, that she wants to change all that, and today she confirmed that the hospital was moving in that direction.  That's really great news, because Columbia really is a good place to have a Hemispherectomy.  And in partnership with Blythedale for rehab, it makes it very easy to go through the whole process.

Thank you to his Class

Bob writes -  Byron was very happy to receive the Get Well Soon Slide Show from his class today.  Byron wanted to record a thank you for his teacher to show to the kids.    Take a look!