GEORGIA — Clara Fuller, 18, couldn’t sleep. Multiple seizures a night left her exhausted.
“I went four years without a good night’s sleep,” she said.
Fuller, who grew up in Georgia, was diagnosed with epilepsy at age 13 and went from the top of her class to napping in class.
Her grades life and her life suffered.
“This was heartbreaking. I, of course, I was calling every doctor, going to every place I could think of to try to get her some type of treatment,” her father Brian Fuller said.
Medications didn’t work, so this summer Clara sought help in a new FDA-cleared brain implant called Neuro One that can diagnose and treat epilepsy.
“I started experiencing pain all across my chest and my head,” Clara said.
Brain surgery for drug-resistant epilepsy like Clara’s usually entails two surgeries: one locating the area in the brain where the seizures occur; and two, ablation or removal of the brain tissue that causes the seizures.
Neuro One now condenses that process into one procedure in which doctors implant thin electrodes in the brain that pinpoint where the seizures are occurring using the same device to destroy the damaged tissue and monitor the brain afterward.
“It gives us that immediate feedback,” Dr. Brin Freund said. “The electrodes are in place and we can, we can do the ablation and record the activity right away.”
Doctors quickly saw they hadn’t fixed Clara’s seizures and did another ablation without the extra surgery.
Clara has been seizure-free and sleeping soundly ever since.
“I’m in college now, and I’m succeeding in college. I can go be a teenager,” Clara said. “This electrode is the best thing since sliced bread.”
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