Tag: SPECT

Tuesday Tests

Darren LongLeave a comment

First was the SPECT Scan. This thing isn’t very exciting. First I got a shot of radioactive juice to light up my brain. Then, I laid on a table (and couldn’t move) for 30 minutes while a big flat imaging machine took a 3D picture of my brain. This was tons of fun. All this stuff took quite awhile to finish. My appointment started @ 2:00 and finished @ 3:30. Good thing, that’s right when I needed to get to the basement to do my next test.

The next one was the Functional MRI. This was different from any I’ve done before. If you’ve ever had a MRI, this is a step further. Can’t just sleep through this one. You have to actually do things while the MRI is running.

  • First the hand: Image of a hand or a hand with a line through it. Hand image, I had to tap my fingers to my thumb back and forth and the line through it meant take a break. Just the fingers, don’t move anything else.
  • Next is the foot: Foot image, move just the toes and not the foot. The image of the foot with a line, stop.
  • Then the lips (no, really): See the lips, pucker. See the line through them, relax.

The rest of the tests were “thinking” and not moving at all.

  • First is the single letter. A letter would show and I would have to think about saying (without saying or moving my lips) words that start with that letter. That letter would stay there for a few seconds, would relax for a couple and another come up.
  • Second was one where there was a sentence missing a word or words and I had to think about what the missing word or words. Now along with these, there were also sentences of gibberish letters and a word missing space. Those I was not supposed to think about anything. Sounded really easy when the guy was explaining it to me before I climbed in. But when the statements started going, they flashed fast! My mind wanders too much too. When I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about anything, I was thinking about my last answer. So….
  • Another was showing a single word and I had to think of a word that goes along with that word. Such as: I would see “juice” and then I think of “drink”. I see “car” and I think “drive”.

I think there had to have been one or two more, but that’s all I can remember with this brain of mine. I heard that the guy that reads the output and writes up the reports for the doctor does it pretty quick, as far as the MRI one goes.

Day 5

Darren Long1 Comment

It’s Friday. Still here at KU Med Hospital. Still have my head probes. Still in bed and on camera. The doc came by and said that since I haven’t had a seizure yet, I’ll have to be here till Monday or longer.

…

So here’s what’s happening… It’s Friday night and having a seizure before Monday will be not the best time to have one. You see, the people that inject the radioactive liquid into my veins to do the SPECT scan don’t work on the weekend. I need to do this SPECT scan right after I have a seizure. So, I’ll just have to wait here till Monday before I can get any seizures fully checked out by scanning my brain.

Now I wait for the weekend to go away…..

BRAIN…

Darren Long1 Comment

I’ve started seeing a new Neurologist recently over at Kansas University Med (KU Med). She seems very nice and seems to know what she’s talking about. I was, as per her suggestion, going to get a VNS implant into my shoulder to help with the seizures that I have had all my life and have gone through every type of Epileptic medication there is. I suggested to her that I get a MRI and EEG first just for us to see the status of my brain. So, on Valentines Day, I got to go back to KU Med to do the lovely two tests for the celebrations of the holiday 🙂 to check everything out. Few weeks later I met with the new doc and she told me that from the looks of my messed up brain (not the exact words she used), doing the VNS implant is off the table.

Now she is talking about full-on brain surgery (Temporal Lobe Resection) to cut away the “bad” parts of my brain. This is going to entail a few more tests first. The first one on March 29th, is similar to what would be called a cognitive test (forget the official name). This is an all day test up at KU Med. A week away from now. I’ll have to let you how all that went afterwards. Then after that, on April 8th I get to start a Seven-Day Video EEG. Seven days stuck in a hospital room. I’m either in the bed, in a chair or visiting the bathroom. No showers. No baths (maybe a sponge-bath done by a pretty college girl ).  Visiting the bathroom is the only time I will be without video cameras watching me all the time. Can’t sleep under sheets and have I must have the lights on while I sleep just so that the video camera will watch me constantly. Arg!

Also as part of the Video EEG is the taking me off my meds and a lack of sleep. I’m sure this will cause me to have a few seizures with those things happening (or lack of happening). I’ve read about people doing these EEG’s and the doctors are looking for the outcome from a certain type of seizure. These people were only having grand-mal seizures, and that’s not what they needed. So, they had to do the Video EEG multiple times.

One more test… SPECT Brain Imaging. This is a 2 hour test that entails the injection a radiopharmaceutical (radio-active) one hour before imaging begins. The imaging is done with me laying down and a “camera” revolving around my head taking 3D images of my brain. The injection of the radio-active stuff shows the blood flow around the brain. After seeing this, the doctors can recognize the areas of the brain that are being used the most and which is used the least

I’ve heard and read that these rooms are pretty nice with a cool TV, fridge and other things. Kinda like a hotel room. Hope I can take my cell phone so I can chat with people while I’m there and brag about what they are missing. ha ha…  I’ll take pictures later when I get in there to show everyone myself and my cool room. I’ll let everyone know how the test next Friday went.

A couple links:

SPECT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-photon_emission_computed_tomography

Video EEG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_video-EEG_monitoring

MRI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_resonance_imaging