December 30th — MRI

January 3rd — Meeting with Neurologist

Well, went to go see my Neurosurgeon about my hole in my head. He said, “It should heal itself from the inside out. Get a scab on it. Use Neosporin on it.”

Basically, he just told me to keep doing what I was already doing.

Keep an eye on the thing and make sure it is growing smaller, else they may have problems when they chop my head open again sometime next month. 😐

There’s one thing that I forgot to say when we were at the KU Med Emergency Room the other night and other times. I have noticed that I am known entirely by Neurological portion of the hospital as “Darren”,  the “guy who pulled out the EEG leads from the inside of his head”.

The staples are out of the head! Little painful, but just mainly the pain was from the staples on the sides in front of my ears as shown below. Took a little while to pull them all out, but they’re all gone. Didn’t do the MRI like I thought I was going to be doing today. I was told the doc would contact me about a meeting a MRI sometime soon.

I’ve been asked this a few times, so I thought I’d update everyone as to my current standings.

1. Where are you at now?

Last Friday (11/15), I came home with the 125+ staples in my head.

2. What’s next?

Tuesday (11/26) I am going back to KU Med to get these staples removed. That should be interesting.

3. What have I been doing while spending all this time at home?

NOTHING!

4. What did the doctors tell me to do when I get home?

NOTHING! Relax and take it easy.

The next thing that will be happening after the removal of the staples: in January sometime is the next two surgeries. The first of the two is to slice and fold over a portion of the skull covering the left hemisphere. Then a larger EEG type map placed directly to my brain just on that side. This is to find precisely where the damage is located at. After the EEG map is placed onto the brain, the doctors want me to have another (I’m guessing) 3-4 seizures.

Once I have these seizures, I can have my third surgery. This will be the official cutting of the bad area out from my brain. All of this is done at one hospital stay.

One thing I learned from the last time I was in the hospital: the surgeon told me that my left hemisphere is significantly smaller than the right hemisphere. This is because of the 30 years of seizures. The doctors just kind of  shake their heads and wonder how I’m functioning so well as I have all my life.