A Very Busy Week

Welcome back to the next Thriving Not Just Surviving blog post. The past week has been very busy with several doctor appointments, physical therapy, and working remotely.

There are still outstanding questions, but we did receive some answers as well. Physical Therapy continues go well. My back pain has improved significantly and I continue to increase my activity. On Wednesday I visited with my shoulder specialist who delivered the good news that my shoulder will most likely not require surgery. There is the potential for a minor arthroscopic procedure to clean up scar tissue. However, we are still at least 6 months away from making that decision. In the meantime, I will continue to use a sling on my right arm. I hope to start physical therapy on the shoulder in the coming weeks. Despite not requiring surgery, the doctor was surprised at the extent of the shoulder injury. He remarked that normally the only time he sees an injury like this is when someone has been electrocuted.

The most important part of the week was the appointment with the neurologist. Maureen and I spent over an hour with the neurologist reviewing the events of the past few weeks, viewing the neurological test results, and getting a better understanding of my seizures.

The seizures that I've experienced are considered gran mal seizures. This is a type of seizure that is usually more serious in nature with violent muscle contractions throughout the body. Unfortunately these types of seizures are most commonly associated with serious injuries. The neurologist said I was lucky to only experience a fractured shoulder from the 4 gran mal seizures. Additionally, since I've had more than one seizure, I was formally diagnosed with epilepsy. We don't have an official cause, but there are two potential likely causes: genetics and an immune response from my cancer.

There is a history of epilepsy on my dad's side of the family and its possible that I have the genetics associated with seizures. The immune response from the cancer is a slightly more complicated cause. To keep it simple, its possible that the tumor in my lungs is releasing proteins that contain the bio-markers that my immune system uses to identify attack the cancer. These proteins, although not cancer cells, could be in the brain and my immune system is mistaking the proteins as cancer cells which results in an immune response in the brain. The immune response could trigger a seizure. I underwent blood work that will check to see if these proteins are present.

Both potential causes do have remedies. If the seizures are genetic, I will most likely continue on my current seizure medication for the foreseeable future. If the blood work tests positive for the proteins, there are additional immunotherapy-type treatments that can retrain the immune system to distinguish between the proteins and actual cancer cells. We won't know the results of the blood work for a few weeks.

The neurologist said that it was encouraging that I've not had any further seizures since starting the anti-seizure medication. However, I'm not out of the woods yet. At least a month needs to pass since the last seizure to have more confidence in the effectiveness of the medication. He stressed the importance of rest, safety precautions, and stress reduction as the most important remedies to avoid a relapse. 

Over the past few weeks since the last seizure I've experienced some short term memory loss. Although scary and frustrating, this is to be expected. Since returning to work and increasing my mental stimulation, the memories have started to return. I've found that having conversations, even over the phone, have helped recall some of the memories and reduced the brain fog.

Its obviously been a very busy week and I've provided a ton of information in this post. I'm hoping that the upcoming week is slower with less news. I plan to use the posts over the next few weeks to provide additional details from the neurological testing and the implications of epilepsy and stage 4 lung cancer.