Tony's Page
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This is my son Tony.  Tony was born with epilepsy.  We spent 14 years coping with it.  For Tony it was not controllable with medicine.  There were some other options available, but I could not make those decisions alone.  When Tony turned 14 he came to me to ask about the possibility of brain surgery to cure him.  He had seen people on the news who had this done.
In January, 6 years ago we began an awesome adventure on the road to a new life for him.  After many preliminary tests, my son agreed to have electrodes implanted in his brain to capture his seizures with a special computer that could pin point the exact place where they came from.  It took 8 months of various tests and procedures.

He spent 10 days literally tied to his bed by electrodes and wires, 256 in all!  At the end of the 10 days, the doctors not only knew where Tony's seizures originated, but they also knew that the location was in a part of the brain that Tony did not use.

On October 2, 1997, Tony underwent surgery to remove the part of his brain that caused his seizures.  He had remained seizure free since then, that is until he decided to cold turkey off his medicine without doctor's approval.  He still will have to take medicine for the several more years before we will know for sure if he is cured, but he figures even if he isn't, we found a way to stop them, the surgery and medicine.

If you want to find out more about epilepsy and this procedure, you can click on this link and go the the
Understanding Epilepsy or the Temple Medical Center Homepage.  We hope Tony's story will help another person to take the chance to change their life too.  Since this surgery, I now have a normal teenager free of fear of having a seizure in public.  You guessed it, I am now his personal taxi, and I am loving it.
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judybg@oocities.com