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Hi Giliard, my son had his left temporal lobe removed & then some surrounding matter around it the second time around. He scored in the 98 percentile in math nationally before the first surgery, has dipped down to around the 80 percentile but actually went up in English. He still scores higher than most of his peers after missing a year of school.

As for being stupid or not, my son had his first procedure at 15 & this last one at 17. The doctors explain that he had the problem at birth and his brain developed around the problem. The tissue they removed was already bad, the side effects are due to losing some good cells. The eye sight is due to nerves being removed or hit.

Re: Sleep. This time around they did some additional sleep studies for sleep apnea in rehab. They found he wasn't getting into a REM state until after 3 hours of sleeping instead of within minutes as normal. He's got a small breathing machine that forces regular air into his lungs at slightly higher pressure than normal. He sleeps better and has tons more energy. Do you have one? If not I HIGHLY recommend a sleep study & a machine if they find you need one.

Hi Sparky. I haven't had a sleep study, but my days and nights get switched around easily. I take meds to help me sleep and that does wonders. No apnea, just a screwed up clock. I've heard that's common.

I had my IQ testing done before and after surgery and there was no change. I have a high IQ...something some of my teachers in school never cared to notice. :) They heard the word epilepsy and treated me different. That went away when I started taking advanced math classes. It's too bad they don't educate people about epilepsy more.

I had a tumor in my temporal lobe that had also been there since birth. The tumor caused the seizure, which in turn caused more damage. By the time I got through school something had to be done. It's good that they did the surgery when they did because the cells in the tumor were starting to turn malignant. God is good.

I'm glad your son got his sleep problems addressed. It's so important for people with epilepsy to get sleep. Being tired makes things much worse. Not to mention it's not fun having no energy. I pray all goes well for your son.