Tag: awake brain surgery

  • Chapter 18: Cognitive dysfunction

    The effects of Dustin’s seizures, surgery, and swelling had a significant impact on Dustin’s cognitive abilities. Thankfully, they improved over time but it was really scary the first few months after surgery. The rest of Dustin’s hospitalization was relatively uneventful. He was on continuous EEG monitoring for seizures after surgery. From what we could tell,…

  • Chapter 16: Awake Brain Surgery

    Dustin’s surgery was officially scheduled. His surgery would be the first case on Friday, August 3rd, 2018. The week leading up to Friday was a lot of “hurry up and wait” – hurry up and do the fMRI, wait, hurry up and do the neuropsych testing, wait, keep monitoring for seizures, wait. The neurosurgeon, Matt,…

  • Chapter 11: The Neurosurgeon

    People in healthcare are often interesting humans. Like any number of professions, healthcare often has lots of stereotypes associated with specific roles. Surgeons are often stereotyped as arrogant and crass. Oncologists are often stereotyped as kind and overly optimistic. Psychiatrists are often stereotyped as quirky but good listeners. Nurses are either stereotyped as angles or…

  • Chapter 7: Non-stop appointments

    After getting discharged a second time after getting a blood patch for a spinal CSF leak, we still had a lot of trips to the hospital for appointments over the next week. I still hadn’t been contacted to set up Dustin’s follow up appointments with a neurologist, so I worked on the consults my attendings…