Surgery in the right hands can lead to freedom from seizures
Shaking, staring into space, changes in vision, falling down, uncontrolled screaming, slurred speech, hearing sounds that don’t exist — these are some of the scary effects people experience with epilepsy, a seizure disorder that affects 3.4 million people in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Though movies often portray a violently shaking, flailing person, that’s not always the case. Epilepsy is complicated, and it manifests itself in ways unique to that individual. Treatment is complicated as well, making finding an experienced medical team critical to reducing, controlling and even preventing seizures as well as returning to a more normal life.
Seizures are caused by surges in electrical activity in the brain that cause brain cells to send abnormal signals to each other. These signals can spin out of control and lead to changes in the behavior of a person’s body and mind. Seizures can be caused by a range of health issues and may occur without warning. Mysteriously, they can also occur in adults who have always been healthy and never had a brain injury.
Epilepsy is diagnosed after a person has two or more seizures that are not caused by another condition. People with uncontrolled seizures often cannot drive, swim, climb ladders or ride a bicycle alone.
Tamarra Blassingame, 39, of
Middletown, knows all too well the havoc epilepsy can play in someone’s life. For years, she awoke every morning to instant fear, wondering when her daily seizure would hit. She was also plagued by fatigue that made it hard to be an active mom. Sometimes a headache warned her a seizure was coming. Other times she didn’t know she’d had a seizure
until she was on the floor or she was told she was slurring her words or she awoke to blood on her pillow. During a seizure she sometimes screamed and flipped on her side, once falling off the bed and cracking her head on a side table.
With two young children, Blassingame worried about the toll on her children from witnessing these scary events. Epilepsy ruled her thoughts and her life.
Her physician suggested surgery to her several times, but she was, at first, afraid of the invasiveness of brain surgery and said she wasn’t ready. She tried at least seven different medications, but her seizures continued. But one day a few years ago, she had a defining moment at an amusement park. As she struggled to keep up with her family while enduring unrelenting fatigue, she decided she was ready.
“I just wanted to be able to have fun with my kids and just be the mom I know I can be. And I don’t want them to see me in the bed or on the couch all the time. I want to be able to be active with them,” she says.
She called her doctor and was referred to the Epilepsy Center at Hartford HealthCare’s Ayer Neuroscience Institute — recently accredited at the highest level by the National Association of Epilepsy Centers — where they offer the most advanced care available for people with seizures and epilepsy.
What followed was a yearlong but critically important process as Hartford HealthCare’s multidisciplinary team of experts — including neurology, neurosurgery, neuroradiology, neuropsychology, social work and others — collected and analyzed data and met regularly to pinpoint the source of seizures in Blassingame’s brain.
“Planning is really the most crucial part of this process,” says Blassingame’s neurosurgeon, Dr. Mohamad Khaled, director of quality at Hartford HealthCare’s Ayer Neuroscience Institute. “Planning is harder than the execution,” he adds.
Planning evolves as data is collected. Once an initial process of noninvasive imaging and monitoring is complete, invasive monitoring begins, requiring surgery. During this step, up to 16 electrodes are implanted in the depths of the brain in targeted spots so electrical activity, such as seizures, can be monitored. On average, the patient undergoes continuous brain activity recording at the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit in Hartford Hospital for about two weeks. If all goes well, the seizure onset zone will be pinpointed in the brain and surgery to resect (remove that tissue) can proceed.
“We are very careful to only offer surgery when we are very, very confident that the resection is going to benefit the patient.” So far, 100% of the Epilepsy Center’s resection patients have become free of disabling seizures, he adds.
In Blassingame’s case, the team was confident they had located the area of the brain where her seizures originated, and, further, felt that her regular brain functions, and therefore her daily activities, would not be negatively impacted.
The surgery went “very, very well,” Dr. Khaled says. “She hasn’t had a seizure since.”
Blassingame says she is so impressed with her Hartford HealthCare team. “They were hands-on with me through the whole thing. They told me the good, bad and the ugly. They did not sugarcoat. I would not trade my team or hospital for the world. They made me so comfortable; they were like a second family, so respectful and so kind. All the way to the dieticians, to the cleaning staff — amazing!”
Today, nearly six months after her resection surgery, Blassingame is still recovering her stamina and strength, and she hopes that by summer she can apply for a driver’s license and ease into working again, perhaps part-time at first. Though recovery is slower than she’d like, she is told she is making good progress, and she is overjoyed with her decision to pursue surgery.
“I am ecstatic to be seizure-free. I wake up every day, and it’s a little surreal. I don’t have to worry about seizures any more,” she says.
Dr. Khaled wants patients as well as other physicians to know the benefits of surgery when it is offered to patients early on.
“The brain is impacted negatively with every seizure. This can affect the patient’s IQ, their mood. A lot of patients deal with depression, anxiety and social issues because they are having seizures. And there’s something called SUDEP, which is sudden unexpected death due to epilepsy. Basically, they have a seizure in their sleep and die. So a seizure can lead to death.”
He adds that he and the team want to reduce the fear of brain surgery as well. The process of determining the benefits and risks of potential surgery is individualized to each patient and only offered if there is a good chance of seizure freedom and very low risk of harm. “If a patient has a tumor or aneurysm, no one thinks twice about brain surgery.”
He adds that with all of the advances, including navigation systems and monitoring systems that assist in brain surgery, in the right surgical hands, epilepsy patients can get a new lease on life. Studies show that some patients with a 1% chance of seizure freedom from medications have more than 70% chance of being cured of epilepsy after surgery.
“The sooner the epilepsy is recognized and referred to a level 4 epilepsy center, the sooner a cure,” Dr. Khaled says. “Adult epilepsy is not going to get better without treatment — it’s only going to get worse. Save your life and change your life. Your quality of life will improve.”
To find out more about epilepsy, visit here.
Additionally, you can ask questions during a Hartford HealthCare Facebook Live discussion April 21 at 12:30 p.m. You can also send questions anonymously to ConnectToHealthier@courant.com.
—Laura Strom for Hartford HealthCare
This paid post is produced by Studio 1847, a division of Tribune Publishing Co., on behalf of Hartford HealthCare. The newsrooms or editorial departments of Tribune Publishing Co. are not involved in the production of this content.