Final report from the Patient Advisory board came in this morning, and we are disappointed, but willing to go with the game plan. Larry's epilepsy seems to be very complex. He has a lesion in the right side of his temporal lobe, but that is not where the seizures are coming from. The tests do concur they are happening in his left temporal-occipital-parietal area. So...since you can't very well do exploratory surgery on the brain (thanks, Mom for that thought!), they are going to hold off and want to try one more medication. I have a call into his neurologist to start him on Keppra. The Lamictal is working better but not sufficiently, and since they want to try the Keppra, why not just go ahead? We'll see what the neurologist says about it. We are disappointed just because we were prepared mentally for this next step. However, we are very happy they aren't knife happy.

We got back his neuropsychological test results, too. He is above average in IQ and the only deficit they really saw was in verbal learning. The score there wasn't as high as it should have been based on his IQ results. That points to the left hemisphere of the brain, also. Very interesting, eh? The rest of the 3 page report was very interesting, also, but I won't post it as Larry would kill me! ;-)

So...we are back to waiting and trying new things. We have an appointment in Lubbock for August 21st to see his neurologist there. I assume we'll come up with a strong game plan then. I'm waiting for the nurse to call me back now, too, so we can talk about the Keppra. Since he's not on full strength of the Lamictal, I'm not sure if they'll change him over right away or not.

I'll update you more later when I hear back from them.