OK, I admit it. Nothing really happened on our cruise to Alaska that has to do with Rachel’s epilepsy. Yes, she had one seizure on the cruise ship, so that can go on the list along with Hollywood Boulevard.
But we had so much fun in Alaska, and it was sooo nice to not think about seizures for a week. How can I NOT add this one teensy post, and squeeze this one cute picture in?
During the summer we had Rachel’s mental capabilities tested. Even before her medical condition, it was something we were considering. We had gotten a strong recommendation forJohn Aulenta, a psychologist in Monterey, and had already been thinking that testing might be helpful. Now knowing that her brain had a most unhelpful displosion in it, the time had clearly come. Her new neurologist was also very interested to see the results, to help evaluate how functional her right temporal lobe was.
I have always had a very low opinion of classic IQ tests. I think they essentially test how similar the subject is to Einstein, and that always struck me as a most unhelpful way to evaluate humans.
The opposite was true of the tests performed on Rachel. Aulenta’s tests didn’t produce a single IQ number; they produced dozens. This much more resembles my experience with people: we are usually good at some things, and not so good at others.
For Rachel the results were incredibly striking. The hippocampus is the place where we form memories. The one on the left side forms language-related memories (i.e. reading a book). The one on the right forms visual memories (i.e. reproducing an abstract drawing you got to look at for 5-10 seconds). All of Rachel’s tests results bounced around in the 60-90 percentile range, except one: with visual memory she was in the 18th percentile.
For Dr. Porter, this was very strong evidence that her right temporal lobe was already not helping Rachel. It was strong evidence that a more aggressive surgery, with a greater chance of stopping the seizures, would not carry greater risks of compromised capabilities.