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@A MyEpilepsyTeam Member I’m seeing a lot of negative answers but I have to tell you, my VNS is the best thing I ever did! Not only has it decreased my number of seizures, my recovery time is SOOO much faster, and VERY little, if any, aphasia.
My dr said the only requirement is that you prove to be ‘drug resistant’… which means they’ve tried 2. It has really changed my life for the better! I hope it ends up being an option for you!

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A MyEpile...

The first thing that happened to me was having the depth electrodes test. That was over three weeks long. The reason that happened is my Dr. wanted to know where my seizures were coming from in my brain, after getting those results my Dr. knew if some more options for more surgery were possible. Unfortunately more surgery is not possible. So the VNS was the only other thing to do along with taking medication. My VNS worked perfectly, slide the magnet 🧲 over the stimulator and it worked/turned on. The batteries 🪫 inside the one I have now are dead, so I have been told I will be getting a new model VNS in the future. I’m terribly sorry things did not work out correctly for some of You. Keep the faith-something good will come for all of us eventually!

What Clark wrote is incorrect. As I wrote, I haven't had a grand mal or petit mal seizure since I had the VNS implant done 25 years ago. Back then, I was having four grand mal seizures per day every three months. The day before and the day after, I'd have four to eight simple partials. Over the past three years, I've only had three days with simple partials (I call them dizzy spells). And I have far fewer of them. I was out with a friend of mine two days ago and had one. That was it. Just that one. Prior to that, I have only had two other simple partials within the previous six months. In the two and half years before that, I hadn't had any. That's because I lost 140 pounds. But in the past six months, I regained about 20 pounds.

It all depends upon what your neurologist feels would work best for you. My best friend was one of the first 1,000 in the world to get a VNS and I was one of the first 1,500 people in the world to get a VNS back in the 1990's. I haven't had a grand mal seizure since the implant was done. Once every three or four months, I will have a "bad day"---those are days when I have three or four simple partials/dizzy spells. But, since the beginning of 2020, I hadn't had any since the beginning of this calendar year. I've only had two bad days. One was this past week, and the other was at the end of January. You won't even know that you have the implant after about a week. They're great!!!! I've given speeches and held seminars about the VNS. All I can say about them is that they work. But keep the magnets away from your wallet, your computer and your ATM card. It will erase all of the information on them.