My husband had Gamma Knife Surgery at Scripps in La Jolla Calif around 2000 at around 40 years of age. Within about 5 months of having it, the pain totally disappeared but something else seemed to happen to him (a side effect) of which I will get to in a minute.
I have a couple of questions for anyone who has done research on GKS or have had it themselves.
The pain is back in full swing now and he's back on Tegretol. Since the surgery, he'd only had fleeting twinges of pain throughout the years. I would say in the last 3 years or so, the time between episodes became less and now here we are back to what it was before.
We were told this could happen so no surprises there but the other thing they didn't tell us is that the GAMMA KNIFE surgery could have some side effects; with effects on memory and thinking processes.
After his surgery, within months of it in fact, he said he recognized a diminished quality to his thinking and it took a lot more effort to get his work done at his job. I also noticed subtle things, nothing huge but still noticeably, a lack of sharpness and sometimes he would get frustrated over it. At first, it annoyed me because I wasn't use to him being like that and didn't put 2 and 2 together but am now convinced that the Gamma Knife might have produced some kind of collateral damage to the area of his brain where thought process is effected. At his job he has to be quick on his feet and it is a high stress environment so he has had to push himself even harder to deal effectively with this problem, and not to show it on the outside.
My question to anyone, is, have you come across literature about the possible damaging side effects of GMS? Or have you had the surgery and experienced any side effects at all? Because in all my own digging I only found one passing mention about Gamma (when used in regard to brain tumors) might have an negative effect on memory. Other than that, almost NO "negative" information ever appears about using cobalt radiation for this particular TN therapy or else the information out there is minimized.
At this point, I don't really want him to have another Gamma Knife but we also don't really want to do MVD either. For now he's holding up under Tegretol but as everyone knows that causes brain fog, something which only adds to his struggles already. He can only go so high on the Teg before he can hardly work. His job doesn't know about his condition and he want to keep it that way.