5/4 - The prognosis

Jake had his MRI and EEG. It was an excruciating day, because you have to refrain from food pre-MRI, and all he wanted all day long was food. He got more and more worked up and grumpy about hunger, and it ultimately took three doses of the sleep medicine to put him out for the MRI.

The neurologist's opinion is what I expected - It's either very scary or somewhat reassuring, depending on your life outlook. He has multiple brain lesions, which could be impairing his functions. Sounds awful, doesn't it? The neurologist thinks they were caused by the high blood pressure.

However, these kinds of lesions are treatable and the body cures them on its own. In layman's terms (which is all I've got, until our friend Jon the neurologist guest blogs), when you get really high pressure, the brain gets a bit leaky and brain fluid leaks into the blood. Take away the pressure, and the lesions start to resolve themselves. The MRI shows no bleeding, no pools, no bursting. It's kind of like a brain bruise. The MRI also shows the infarctions from the prior strokes have essentially disappeared. It's my belief that the same thing will happen with the lesions.

The neurologist has suggested there's a possibility that the hallucinations and the eyesight issues could be from the brain lesions and not the Adavan. We'll keep an eye out on this, but my parental instincts and our previous experience with painkillers make me believe that it's a pharmaceutical side effect. On the other hand, if the hallucinations are going to continue until the lesions completely disappear (which can be three to six weeks for them to resolve on the MRI), our lives are really going to stink for the coming weeks.

So - where does this leave us? He'll be on anti-seizure medicine (Depakote) for a while. We'll continue to carefully watch his blood pressure. We (i.e., not Larry, but the rest of the family) will continue to second guess every physician in the hospital as to where the blood pressure issues are coming from and whether this latest event was avoidable.

P.S. - the neurologist that we met with is the same one who gave us the "gruff" assessment last month. Today's consult was a pleasure. Call off the hit squad (you know who you are).

One special acknowledgement. I'd mentioned in a previous entry that Jake likes Gushers. Our friend Camille and her son GianPaul created a "Gushers tree", which is like a Christmas tree made out of packages of Gushers. You really have to see it.