Your Good Healtth

Or mine actually.

Given the origins of this blog I thought I should mention the current state of my health four years on from that fateful day 1n 1997.

1. I am still alive: This in itself is more than I could have hoped for and I seem to well into the long tail of the morbidity statistics for my condition. Sometimes it is hard to imagine that I am terminally ill.
2. Side Effects from my condition or treatments: It is difficult for me to tell which is which, and the doctors can't tell either.
   - My Brain-Speech connection still has problems and I lose words and forget names more than is normal (or was normal for me). It may be getting worse, but it is definitely a slow progression ifit is. It is the only thing that still scares me, the idea that I might at some time lose my ability to communicate.
   - I still have some insensitivity on my right side but either it has got better or I have gotten used to it, I think this was a by-product of my biopsy, but as I said nobody can prove it one way or another.
   - I still get headaches on the left side of my head in the mornings, on waking, several times a week, but they are not severe and they usually go away within 30 minutes.
3. Drugs: I only take Timonil (Carbamazepine) 300 twice a day as a precautionary measure against seizures. This to make sure that my regular EEG doesn't show too much craziness in the damage areas (see plot below) because if it did  I would be banned from driving. (Given the drugs I am more likely to get banned for other reasons, but more of that in another post perhaps).
4. Monitoring: I am now down to 2 check ups a year which comes down to alternate EEG / MRI appointments. Sometimes I feel embarassed taking up the time of the guys and gals at the hospital just so that Professor Neuro can say "No Change"

Just in case anybody is interested here is my latest EEG from yesterday:

Interesting bit is around 3:47 where the sensors (FP1-F7, F7-T3, T3-T5, T5-O1) around my damage get a little crazy,
but not crazy enough to worry Prof. Neuro thank goodness

 P.S. I have added a tag Health so you can track just the health stuff

World Cup Final - Rugby

I decided to change the order of my Timonil (Carbamazepine) Retard intake to try and reduce the focal seizures moving from 1/0/2 to 2/0/1 because I reckoned that it made more sense for a retard to be working most during the day and not overnight (I know I should of checked with the Nuerologist first, but....). Ive also stopped taking it together with the Chemo in the morning in order to have it with food an hour later (as suggested on the insert). Had one small seizure (Ian grade L1 at 13:30, but early days yet)

Got a bunch of people coming over this evening to witness the slaughter of South Africa by England in the real World cup final....Rugby. We have South Africans and English in the house so we probably use the Swiss as referees in the living room. In fact my son-in-law played for the Swiss national Rugby team, and I played a little at university (obligatory at Salford) so there is plenty of Rugby in the family.