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I'm Jaime Satterfield.
>> And I'm Josh Satterfield.
>> We've been married for eight years.
>> And we are natives of Greenville, South Carolina,
born and raised.
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We love the upstate.
>> We do [LAUGH].
>> About nine years ago I had viral meningoencephalitis,
which is an infection of lining of the brain,
but also inside of the brain as well.
So the scar tissue has caused me to have epilepsy.
And we've tried for
several years to control it with medication, and it failed.
>> About two-thirds of patients can have their seizures fairly
easily controlled with one or two medicines.
Once patients though have seizures despite
a couple standard medicines,
the majority actually have difficult to control epilepsy.
>> Sometimes it would be just a strange smell
all of the sudden or strange taste in my mouth.
Or just a weird feeling that would just wash over
through my head and neck and my chest.
But sometimes it lasts for just a few seconds and it's gone.
That was my warning sign that I was about to have
a complex partial seizure.
My complex partial seizures were swallowing repetitively or
biting.
>> She was having variable numbers of seizure, but usually
about one seizure a week And it was interfering with work, she's
unable to drive, her husband is very worried about her.
>> It had taken everything she had for
that day just to make it through to that point.
So she would come and crash and just be tired from that.
She wants to do more.
She wants to enjoy life more than that.
Just making it through a day is no way to live.
>> When I saw her, she had failed several
standard anti convulsants and had frequent seizures.
And so we admitted her to our seizure unit to localize her
seizures and see whether she could have epilepsy surgery.
And so patient who wanna consider surgery and
have failed several standard drugs, we bring them in.
They're usually not having daily seizures, and
we usually need three or four seizures.
So we'll very slowly lower the medicines while they're in until
we capture several seizures then we remedicate them.
And then we put a large number of electrodes on
the scalp above the brain and pinpoint their seizures.
>> They decided that I was a good candidate for
surgery because they could localize where my seizures
originated from.
>> I first met Genie and
her family after they had been visiting with Dr. Krause.
And epilepsy team about a possible
therapies that we could offer to help her with her seizures.
At that time we were leaning toward performing a surgery
called a temporal lobectomy which would address
the The issues that she was having in
her right temporal lobe left over from her viral infection.
We talked about what the procedure was like,
we talked about how much hair has to be shaved,
what the skin incision looks like, what to expect in terms of
the amount of pain after the procedure.
And how fast they can get back on their feet.
>> Yeah, it was very scary.
Very scary.
But, I knew that I didn't wanna live like that for
the rest of my life.
I didn't wanna be on all of that medication, and
live a tired life all of the time.
>> It was very dramatic, even not long after surgery as she
recovered, how much more energy she had.
>> I do like being outside, I can enjoy it a lot more now
because I'm not on the sofa at night anymore.
[LAUGH] >> She did very well with
the surgery and really had no problems with dexterity or
speech issues after the surgery.
And what is truly profound to me and certainly meaningful to me
is how well she's done with the surgery.
She still remains seizure free at this point and
is really moving on with her life and doing quite well.
>> She's wanting to do more.
We're enjoying spending time outside the house,
which was a big change from the past.
>> [LAUGH] >> What seven or eight years.
We'd rather laugh about something
than cry about something.
>> He's seen me at my worst.
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] My very worst.
[LAUGH] And stuck with me through it.
>> Everybody has up days and down days.
We, we've had our share of both and Genie's had her share of
down days for sure through all of these.
But we just look forward to having more good ones moving
forward.
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