I Vant to Test Your Blood...ah, ah, ah (imagine stereotypical Dracula voice)

So...what better to do on Halloween than to have some blood drawn for testing????? It seemed appropriate!

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Run down of today's activities...left the house at around 7am, dropped the dog off at the kennel, headed down the road to Fort Worth. We arrived in plenty of time to check in early for the pre-op appointment, answered many questions, heard much information, signed many forms, got blood drawn for testing, and received instructions for Tuesday. We were pretty excited to learn that we have been given a couple of hours reprieve on our check-in time--don't need to be at the hospital until 7am! Sounds much nicer than the original plan of 5am.

The plan for tomorrow will be to have the prep work begin at 7am, surgery will likely commence by around 9am, and last 3-4 hours. This surgery is part one...the placement of the grid of electrodes to do more extensive brain mapping. Once out of surgery, he is scheduled to spend the first night in ICU.

He will be off of his seizure meds, so just like last summer at the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit, the goal is for him to have seizures and collect data in order to plan the next phase. Depending on how long it takes to gather the needed data, the second surgery could happen as early as Thursday (not super likely) but it has tentatively been set for Friday (assuming enough data has been gathered).

The second surgery will involve removing the electrode grid, as well as addressing the issues that they find. Most likely scenario is that they will be removing the small damaged portion of the brain. Following the second surgery, Adam will likely remain in the hospital for 3-5 more days to recover and get stable enough to head home.

We'll be updating as we know more, but this gives you a rough idea of what is coming.

We do have a room at the Ronald McDonald House again for this visit, and if anyone would like to send a card, the easiest path is to send it there.

Adam Kaney, rm. 213
Ronald McDonald House of Fort Worth
1004 7th Avenue
Fort Worth, TX 76104

We did get to do a couple of fun things today...the following photos are from the freshly unveiled Lego model of the Cook Children's Medical Center. Very cool and very recently completed, so we timed that right! We also explored the historic part of Fort Worth, but I'll save that for another post.

Ready...Set...Go!

On October 29, we held our pre-brain-surgery party with appropriately themed food and activities. Several of our friends were able to join us for a festive evening, which gave us fun things to think about rather than worrying about packing and preparing for a little while.

One of the activities was a brain quiz (we'll post it soon for those of you not able to join us!), but the highlight of the evening was the preparatory hair cut. Adam chose to have his head shaved even though the surgeon had told him that although it made things easier, it wasn't absolutely necessary. I think that it had something to do with the fact that the eventual scar will show up ever so much better with less hair to obstruct the view!

At any rate, Adam chose to make the hair cut part of the activities, and everyone who wanted to participate was invited to take a pass or two with the hair clippers. You can see from the photo below that Adam was thrilled to be taking part in this activity!



And here is the new look!



Some of the spooky party food:



The "brain" jello...



...and Brian's birthday cake!

FAQs/Adam's 1st post

This is my 1st post on the blog. With the surgery just around the corner, I decided to answer some of the questions that I get a lot. If you think of a question that isn't here, ask away!

1. When is the surgery?
Phase 1 will take place November 1. Phase 2 will take place shortly thereafter.

2. Where will it be?
Cook Children's Medical Center, Ft Worth, TXhttps://www.cookchildrens.org/ForPatientsFamilies/MedicalCenter/Pages/default.aspx#1

3. How long will your recovery be? When might you be home again?
The recovery time at the hospital could be just a few weeks, followed by several weeks of resting at home.

4. What is going to happen during the surgeries and hospital stay?
I don’t have the clearest idea now. See Q8 for more info.

5. What do you hope will change after the surgery? Best case scenario?
Significantly less to no medication is what I’m hoping for.

6. Will you have a killer scar to show off?
Heck yeah!!!

7. Are you worried about the surgery?
Not really. Things like this just don’t faze me that much for some reason.

8. Where can I read more about this type of surgery?
I just do a Google search for epilepsy surgery. These are a few I’ve readhttp://www.epilepsy.com/epilepsy/journal/issue1/surgery?gclid=CIaZ_v3x-qsCFQPs7QodHTBOmg http://www.epilepsy.com/EPILEPSY/surgery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epilepsy_surgery

9. How many lattes do you think that your mom will buy while you are at the hospital?
My guess is between 5 and 8 per week.

10. What are you looking forward to doing once you are home again?
Starting to get off my medication.

11. How will you and your parents pass the time in the hospital?
We will have our laptops with us, enough said.

12. Do you have any plans for future surgeries?
Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) will be in the works as soon as this 1st surgery is done.

Plans, plans, and more plans!

By now, many of you may have heard that the date for Adam's upcoming surgery has finally settled into place. Originally, we thought that the optimal plan was going to be for Adam to complete his freshman year of college and then proceed with the surgery in the summer. Next plan was for Adam to complete fall semester and the surgery was scheduled for Jan. 10. But...we Kaney's don't like to take the boring first or second plan...instead, to keep things interesting, we came up with a third plan! The magic third plan (which we think that we are sticking with!!) is for Adam to take a hiatus from college, and the surgery is now scheduled for Nov. 1!

Now, the pre-op appointment just happens to fall on Halloween, so we've had a lot of fun thinking about all of the connections (or possible connections) between brain surgery...Halloween...ghouls...zombies...well, you get the idea!!!! To celebrate those connections, just have fun, and set the tone for our trip to Ft. Worth...we're going to hold a brain party on Oct. 29 before we head south. The fact that Brian's birthday is the next day (Oct. 30), makes this the perfect opportunity for a dual celebration of Brains and Brian! So it will be a Brainy/Briany party with jello made in a brain shaped jello mold (of course we already have one...don't you?), and Adam head shaving (with everyone taking a pass with the hair trimmers if desired), and other general silliness!!!!

If you're in the area, please come by! Pictures will most definitely follow.