Posted by yxibow on November 13, 2006, at 16:49:22
In reply to Re: Has psychosurgery helped anyone? or know someo, posted by Declan on November 11, 2006, at 12:06:49
> Still, there's only so much you can take. This would be too much for me.
That's the whole point.
These are heroic surgeries at best that are performed on a few number of people with informed consent that they may have better or worse results and may have any sort of impediment as a result.
If you had an otherwise untreatable seizure disorder as mentioned as an example, and it was absolutely isolated to a section of the anatomy, would you want to continue to have daily multiple potentially very hazardous seizures or take a chance?
These are the sorts of decisions people have to face because we don't have the drug "cures" or palleatives yet for everything out there, especially very difficult cases.
People are not hacking away at brains, at least not in western countries with US standard of care and MRI and PET/SPECT scans showing these sorts of surgeries. Nobody is stealing one's kidneys, etc.
I agree its not a lovely thought and the articles and pictures may make someone cringe, and I am not sure I could take that choice, but if I had the sort of OCD I had years ago and it was instead in the psychotic spectrum and no SSRI, TCA, antipsychotic, etc, was stopping it -- I don't know. I agree I want to keep my gentle spirit and my IQ, some things that may not disappear from surgery, but you never know. So as I say, its a tough decision that few people go through.
-- Jay
poster:yxibow
thread:701741
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061110/msgs/703191.html