Today I bring you a strange but real story. It is the story of a person who is currently able to live with only his right hemisphere of the brain since his left hemisphere was surgically removed.
Kacie caves lives in Oklahoma. He loves swimming, snorkeling, and scuba diving. What was your favorite subject in school? "Mathematics, no doubt" Kacie responds.
Quite surprising, considering that Kacie only has half a brain.
Years ago, surgeons at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore, Maryland, surgically removed the left side of his brain in a 12-hour operation. For four years, he had suffered seizures that caused him to "twitch" the right side of his face and body. Seizures attacked Kacie 100 times a day, leaving her practically paralyzed and unable to speak.
Kacie suffered from an extremely rare form of epilepsy (recurrent seizures) called Rasmussen encephalitis, a very rare brain disorder that affects children under 10 years of age.
Scientists still don't know for sure what causes Rasmussen encephalitis. "It is probably an autoimmune disease in which the body destroys its own brain tissue"speculates Dr. John Freeman, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Pediatric Epilepsy. Researchers know that Rasmussen patients carry antibodies (substances produced by the body to destroy bacteria or other foreign organisms) to specific proteins in the brain called glutamate receptors. When they enter the brain, these antibodies attack the receptors, causing seizures.
For Kacie, it started with a severe headache when she was 10 years old. "It was the month of May"remembers his mother, Regina. That night, Kacie went into crisis. She walked around the room breaking everything she found. " Her parents rushed Kacie to the hospital. An EEG (measures the electrical activity of the brain) determined that the attack was focused on the left side of his brain.
As Kacie's seizures got worse, her parents took her from one hospital to another, looking for a cure. Kacie's doctors even removed a very small section of her brain where they expected seizures to originate. However, the attacks continued in full fury.
Hemispherectomy
The Caves eventually turned to Dr. Freeman, who suggested such a drastic procedure that the Caves were horrified. Your recommendation: remove the entire left half of the brain, a procedure called a hemispherectomy. The operation, first developed in the 1920s, was soon abandoned, too many patients died during the surgery. However, newer techniques and advanced brain scans have revived the procedure.
The brain is divided into two hemispheres, right and left. Each half controls the opposite side of the body, this is the reason why the electrical disturbances in Kacie's left hemisphere affected the right side of her body. For medical reasons that are not yet known, Rasmussen disease only attacks one hemisphere, but it does not cross to the other side of the brain.
Almost half of all hemispherectomies are performed in children with Rasmussen encephalitis. Surgeons also perform it in children with cortical dysplasia and those with Sturge-Weber syndrome (abnormal blood vessel formation that causes one side of the brain to shrink). Several dozen hemispherectomies are performed each year in the United States.
Children, especially preteens, are the best candidates for hemispherectomies: up to age 12, the human brain continues to grow and develop. This means that even when one hemisphere is removed, the other half quickly compensates for its absence by forming new neurons and dendrites.
Skills that reside on one side of the brain (for example, math and language on the left side) automatically shift to the other side.
The Caves family decided to go ahead with the hemispherectomy. Kacie was almost 14 years old.
Kacie came out of surgery unable to speak (she already had speech problems before the operation). She could say 'yes', 'no', 'thank you' but could not communicate ideas. Kacie did speech therapy every day until the spring of the following year.
Kacie returned to school as a high school freshman. The operation left her right hand practically useless and she walks with a slight limp but when asked how she feels years after the operation, she answers: «I feel very good, really good. I have no more seizures and I am happy about it. "
I leave you with a video of his story (it is in English):