MRI result
I will overcome.
I will overcome.
I will overcome.
I saw Dr Munir the neurologist yesterday. Together we looked at my brain. Well, more accurately we looked at the scans of my brain, as seen through Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
Wow, I sure have some funky stuff going on in there.
"Oh shit!" I cried as I walked into the room where the films were. My eye was instantly drawn to a slice of my brain that has a large black spot right next to a smaller white spot. See the end of this post for a definition of the term 'slice.'
The dark patch -- that's water. Everyone has water surrounding their brain -- it's sort of a shock absorber, same thing as on a car. It's a cushion between your brain and your skull, so that if you hit your head, your brain just sloshes around a bit, you might get a headache, but no serious damage would be done.
Well, in my injury, the impact of me flying 30 or so feet and then landing on my head definitely overcame that built-in shock protection. And so the dark patch is water on my brain, that's filling in for a chunk that's missing.
You heard me: a chunk of the right frontal lobe of my brain is missing. As in "not there."
The bright white areas are scar tissue, and they showed up frighteningly well against the backdrop of normal healthy grey matter. I'm not terribly concerned about that, because those areas are simply not that large, compared to the great gaping black area.
To illustrate the point: Locate a scar on your body. Doesn't matter where. Press lightly on it. See how it feels almost as if there's nothing behind that scar? Same thing. Only this is with my brain.
And although the doctor says these dark areas are fairly normal, I cannot seem to find an MRI scan on the web that is both "normal" and has these dark areas. I also haven't found any scans of people who have had a traumatic brain injury (TBI) like I have.
Apparently, the EEG didn't show anything unusual beyond a general slowing of my brain waves, which he says is normal for someone with a brain injury. So as soon as the machine is available, he wants me to take a 24-48 hour EEG test. This involves wearing a portable EEG machine with all the electrodes attached to my head for a day or more, and I'm supposed to go about my normal activities. Or as normal as they can be, looking like a Bride of Frankenstein reject.
So. The ordeal continues. Excelsior; onward and upward!
and by saying that I am displaying a confidence that I don't really feel
slice: We use the term 'slice' because an MRI is a three-dimensional picture of the body, from the top down. Since we don't have three-dimensional printing yet, we have to look at only two dimensions at a time, using different pictures for the 3d dimension. In the case of these images, we were looking at eighth inch-or-so "slices" of my brain, going from the top of my head down to the top of my neck.
I will overcome.
I will overcome.
I saw Dr Munir the neurologist yesterday. Together we looked at my brain. Well, more accurately we looked at the scans of my brain, as seen through Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
Wow, I sure have some funky stuff going on in there.
"Oh shit!" I cried as I walked into the room where the films were. My eye was instantly drawn to a slice of my brain that has a large black spot right next to a smaller white spot. See the end of this post for a definition of the term 'slice.'
The dark patch -- that's water. Everyone has water surrounding their brain -- it's sort of a shock absorber, same thing as on a car. It's a cushion between your brain and your skull, so that if you hit your head, your brain just sloshes around a bit, you might get a headache, but no serious damage would be done.
Well, in my injury, the impact of me flying 30 or so feet and then landing on my head definitely overcame that built-in shock protection. And so the dark patch is water on my brain, that's filling in for a chunk that's missing.
You heard me: a chunk of the right frontal lobe of my brain is missing. As in "not there."
The bright white areas are scar tissue, and they showed up frighteningly well against the backdrop of normal healthy grey matter. I'm not terribly concerned about that, because those areas are simply not that large, compared to the great gaping black area.
To illustrate the point: Locate a scar on your body. Doesn't matter where. Press lightly on it. See how it feels almost as if there's nothing behind that scar? Same thing. Only this is with my brain.
And although the doctor says these dark areas are fairly normal, I cannot seem to find an MRI scan on the web that is both "normal" and has these dark areas. I also haven't found any scans of people who have had a traumatic brain injury (TBI) like I have.
Apparently, the EEG didn't show anything unusual beyond a general slowing of my brain waves, which he says is normal for someone with a brain injury. So as soon as the machine is available, he wants me to take a 24-48 hour EEG test. This involves wearing a portable EEG machine with all the electrodes attached to my head for a day or more, and I'm supposed to go about my normal activities. Or as normal as they can be, looking like a Bride of Frankenstein reject.
So. The ordeal continues. Excelsior; onward and upward!
and by saying that I am displaying a confidence that I don't really feel
slice: We use the term 'slice' because an MRI is a three-dimensional picture of the body, from the top down. Since we don't have three-dimensional printing yet, we have to look at only two dimensions at a time, using different pictures for the 3d dimension. In the case of these images, we were looking at eighth inch-or-so "slices" of my brain, going from the top of my head down to the top of my neck.