(energetic music)
- People were telling me that I was ignoring 'em
or being unresponsive at times or staring off into space.
They assumed it was daydreaming.
Looking back, I realized that there were
small chunks of time that were erased from my memory.
- [Narrator] When these memory lapses became more frequent,
John realized it was time to seek medical attention.
He was stunned when a doctor told him
he was having epileptic seizures.
- I was floored.
Seizures?
Epilepsy? Me?
Most people think of seizures as a grand,
typical grand mal seizure; you fall, collapse, shake.
Mine were just bits of time that were just being erased.
- Seizures are very much like a person's fingerprint.
They're very unique to them.
What they do is often very individual,
but all those things happen
because of a change in the electrical activity of the brain.
For people diagnosed with epilepsy,
the first line of treatment is anti-epileptic medicines.
- [John] The medication didn't work,
so then they tried another medication.
And medication after medication
and none of 'em were working,
and all of 'em had different side effects.
- [Narrator] John was no longer allowed to drive.
His epilepsy made working difficult
and his quality of life deteriorated.
- As the seizures were progressing,
I moved from doctor to doctor.
I finally went to a highly referred neurologist
and he told me, I need to learn to live with it,
but my mother did not accept that answer.
She insisted that I continue
and she asked me to go to the University of Michigan.
- [Narrator] John was evaluated
at the University of Michigan Epilepsy Program.
This unique program is one of only a few in the country
to offer a large and comprehensive academic center,
bringing together experts from across many medical
and allied health disciplines
to treat and often cure epilepsy.
- Patients are seen individually by various components
of this multidisciplinary group.
We all sit down around a table
with all the information in front of us
and look at all that information
and try to arrive at collective wisdom
that will hopefully give us an approach that is safe
and effective for the treatment of the patient's epilepsy.
- [Narrator] After extensive testing,
the team determined John's epilepsy
had a single focal point in this temporal lobe.
That made John an excellent candidate for epilepsy surgery.
- Whenever there is a focus that's starting the seizures
and that focus can be potentially removed
for cure of the epilepsy,
those are patients who we'd consider for the surgery.
What we actually are doing is we are actually carving out
that area that we think is the cause
of these electrical storms and removing it from the brain
so they can no longer spark the fire of the seizure.
Neurosurgery for treatment of epilepsy
has traditionally been underutilized.
The estimates are that only about one or two
out of 100 people who are eligible
for the neurosurgical treatment for their epilepsy
actually ever get to the operating room.
- He was a beautiful, beautiful butterfly.
- Epilepsy surgery can be transformative.
It allows a person who's lived all their life with seizures
unable to drive, on multiple medicines,
and often, with unacceptable side effects,
to live a life without seizures.
To drive, to get employment,
to restart their life socially, economically, personally.
- Surgery was six years ago
and I remember walking into the hospital early that morning
on May 25th and giving my mom and my girlfriend at the time,
now my wife, and my father all hugs and kisses,
saying my goodbyes.
Six years seizure-free and I'm very happy about it.
It's like it was a...
It was like I started life over again.
I got married, bought a house,
have a family, have my little boy.
Mom was right.
Mom knew best, and I'm very happy that I listened to mom
and went to the University of Michigan.
(hopeful music)