Merriman is not a merry man

Shawne Merriman will go through with season ending surgery after trying to play through a knee injury. What did he expect? Doctors repeatedly told him that not only was his season at risk, but his career was put at risk by attempting to play with such an injury. Then he comes out, plays, and says he didn’t feel right. Did he expect to be Super Man? Not playing is certain to make him unhappy, but dealing with the injury is the best option he has. The San Diego Chargers will survive without him in a conference that is becoming less and less of a powerhouse. The teams should remain competitive for the division with the Denver Broncos, and at least achieve a wild card spot. And in the playoffs anything can happen…

Brady Goes Down

Tom Brady is done. It seems likely that his season is over, and so the Patriots’ season is over too. I hate the Patriots, but I would rather have seen him play bad than go out for the year. If anyone deserved to be injured, I’d say it was Belichick. But this is the way the game goes. The page is turning in the NFL and new teams are starting to rise to the top.

Seizures

What I Learned From My First Reading Session about Seizures

• More than 2 million people in the U.S. have had seizures and/or been diagnosed with epilepsy
• The term seizure is a symptom
• If a seizure is not epileptic, or if a diagnosis is uncertain, it should be described as paroxysmal
• There are about 32 types of seizures
• aprox. 50% of seizures never have an identified cause; the other 50% are usually due to underlying diseases or injury of the brain
• Seizures limited to one portion of the brain are called partial seizures
• Most seizures last from 30 seconds to 2 minutes

For a fairly common ‘symptom’ very little is known about seizures. Understanding seizures better could improve the lifestyle of thousands of people. Equally important, it could decrease the amount of fear in people who suffer a seizure and are unsure of why it happened, if it will happen again, or when it could happen. Tests to search for underlying causes can also be quite time consuming and expensive, often including an EEG, CT scan, and an MRI. Each test can be very important in indentifying problems, but the quality of the tests do not seem to meet the needs of epilepsy/seizure patients since only 50% of the time a cause is identified.