As of Saturday morning (now), Hannah has had seven obvious seizures, and even more seizure activity (tremors). This has given the neurologists some information about where they are originating from. Unfortunately it’s not good information.
When the grid is placed on the surface of the brain, the hope is that the grid is placed over what is thought to be the area where seizures are originating from (based on previous testing). Unfortunately, Hannah’s seizure activity appears to be originating from the top back corner of the grid. What that means is that we can’t tell if what appears on the grid is the entire origination point. It may go back further than where the grid has been placed. So now the neurologists have given us three options…
Option #1: Remove Grid
Remove the grid and do not resect anything. With this option, Hannah would continue to have seizures and future surgery would be more difficult due to scar tissue forming from this grid placement. It’s hard to explain how hard it is on Hannah (and the whole family) to endure multiple seizures a day, so we’re not really prepared to consider this option (even this may eventually be our only option).
Option #2: Resect
Resect based on what we are seeing on the grid. This was explained to us as putting a band-aid on the problem. If we didn’t get the actual origination point, then resecting what we see would just cause the the abnormal electrical activity in her brain to travel another route and her seizures would still occur and just perhaps manifest differently.
Option #3: Move the Grid
Perform surgery again to move the grid. This would involve an additional surgery (and recovery) to go in and move the grid farther back so that the current origination area that they see is centered on the grid. When our neurologist proposed this to the neurosurgeon, the neurosurgeon wanted to make sure the neurologist was confident in finding the origination point before going on another “fishing” trip. Our neurologist seems confident that moving the grid will give a much clearer indication of the actual origination point of the seizures.
What to do?
None of these options are good, but we can’t even consider option 1 or 2, so we’re asking a lot of questions about option 3. Like can a little girl endure four brain surgeries in a two week span?
Oh my. Hard decisions. Sweet Hannah is constantly in our thoughts and prayers. All of you are. And the Doctors… so hard.
I can’t imagine those kind of decisions. I’m praying hard for you guys.
We are going forward with the third option. Surgery is today (August 3rd) to move the grid farther back. Thanks Linsey, Joanna, and everyone else praying for Hannah
Lifting you all in prayer today as well as for the doctors who are doing the surgery. I pray God will truly give you peace and comfort that surpasses understanding.