Great news! After today's scans (and MRI and MEG), we can verify that Adam definitely has a brain! OK, maybe we did know that already...from numerous scans in the past, but always nice to know it is still intact and working.
As far as the other news...not such clear results. We'll learn more about the results of the MEG scan tomorrow when we have our last conference (for this visit) with Dr. Marks. At the moment, Adam's DBS is turned off, and there really isn't a strong distinction between having it on or off at this point. The scans were able to verify that the DBS lead was still in the correct place, which addressed one question of possible shifting that might have explained some of the problems with effectiveness. It is unclear at this point if they will turn the device back on before we leave or not. Pretty much up to Adam at this point.
As for the future, Adam's team will meet and confer over the new information gathered on this visit. One possible approach might be to add a second lead (and a second generator). This has been at least partially effective with some other patients that are similar to Adam. We won't know for certain if this will be the recommended path until the team meets and then we come back for a future appointment.
Our short term plan is that Adam will be discharged from the hospital tomorrow (Saturday) and then we will have a couple of days to help him get ready for his first day of classes at NSU!
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We also got a visit from the Neuropsych doctor. She had the results from Adam's testing and he did fine, in fact his performance was better on every item compared to last June. She said that some improvement on some of the items can be due to the 'practice' effect of having seen the test items before, but that the amount and breadth of improvement was more than would be explained by that. So the surgery's certainly don't seem to have had any negative cognitive impact (in fact they've made him smarter!). Having a lot fewer seizures the last 8 months may have had a positive impact as well.
I always suspected Adam had a brain! (The evidence seems pretty incontrovertible.)
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