2023-10-11 10:09:00
Six-year-old Brianna Bodley began having daily seizures, and doctors were unable to give a correct diagnosis at first. Brianna was diagnosed as suffering from epilepsy, but the treatment was not successful, necessitating an MRI, which revealed that she was suffering from a rare neurological disorder known as “Rasmussen encephalitis.” It is a chronic inflammation of the brain that can lead to permanent brain damage and deterioration of motor skills, according to CNN.
Her mother, Crystal Bodley, does not hide her shock when her daughter was diagnosed. She says, “I was shocked that she was suffering from this disease, as it causes the brain to shrink in these spaces.”
“There are medications that can control this initially, or delay it at a minimum, which is what baby Brianna was undergoing,” explains pediatric neurosurgeon Aaron Robison of Loma Linda University. “However, she needed an additional surgical step to help her.”
Robison adds, “Separating half of the brain is a difficult and delicate task. The goal of surgery is to separate the inflamed brain tissue, not remove it. Once it is separated, the disease can be permanently stopped and perhaps essentially treated.”
The surgery took about 10 hours, and Robison points out, “Instead of cutting the brain, we actually use the natural opening in the brain called the lateral sulcus (Sylvian fissure) that you can look through and cut the white matter from the thalamus.”
Therefore, the right side of Brianna’s brain was stopped from working inside her skull for the rest of her life. As a result, her mother says, “After the surgery, the entire left side of her body will stop working. She will also lose part of her ability to see in her left eye, and she will not have fine motor skills in her left hand.”
The recovery of someone as young as Brianna in particular is amazing, and Robison expects her to be walking within a month. I had to reassure Brianna’s mother that she would still be exactly the same person even after half her brain was cut off. Surgery will not change her personality.”
Brianna still has a long way to go, physical therapy will be tough on her but she will get through it. She will live like a normal child.
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