Key points from today’s guests:

Grace Lindsey, living with epilepsy, seizure-free since surgery

• When Grace was age two, she had her first seizure and that led to a 27-year journey to find a solution.
• Growing up with epilepsy was extremely difficult. Teachers and fellow students did not understand the medical issue and she was teased and bullied.
• She also was unable to do some of the normal day-to-day activities by herself.
• It’s been five years since she has had the life-changing surgery and she has been seizure-free since.
• This has allowed her to live on her own and is now engaged to be married.

Sheila Gill, Grace’s mother

• She checked with numerous doctors and medical institutions all over the country and even Canada to try to get the help her daughter needed to control her seizures.
• Unfortunately, doctors were either misdiagnosing Grace or telling her there was nothing they could do to help.
• When Dr. Ulloa had taken over for a retired doctor, within 30 minutes of their first visit, Dr. Ulloa said she thought she could help.
• Sheila encourages others to not give up the fight when looking for the right healthcare.

Dr. Carol Ulloa, epileptologist; director, Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, The University of Kansas Health System

• For practical purposes, epilepsy can be categorized in two broad categories -- is it focal, or is it generalized? Grace had a focal epilepsy and that's why you can actually pinpoint it. Generalized means it involves both sides of the brain. Each of those have different treatment options.
• For us, really understanding and listening to the symptoms a person is having with the seizure can tell us like the entire story.
• For Grace, listening during the first visit is one of the things I focus on. She said she could see things sort of moving in her environment, that she felt dizzy, and then mom could see her eyes moving involuntarily.
• That automatically puts the seizures toward the back of the brain either in the parietal lobe or the occipital lobe. So you've already really narrowed things down and then the testing is more to further pinpoint things and also try to answer the why.
• One solution was a surgery to remove a portion of Grace’s brain that was causing the issues. A potential risk was a decline in vision off to the right side of her field of vision.
• After carefully reviewing the risks, Grace decided to have the surgery and it was a complete success.

Dr. John Leever, neuroradiologist, The University of Kansas Health System

• Not all MRIs are the same – one of the big differences is in the imaging equipment.
• Here when you get an epilepsy scan, we use the most powerful magnets that are twice as powerful and we have custom protocols that are specifically designed to detect very subtle causes of epilepsy that otherwise would be missed.
• Being part of the epilepsy team and being focused on this, it helps identify key areas that might otherwise be missed.

Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director of Infection Prevention and Control, The University of Kansas Health System

• A new study published found that RSV drug Beyfortus is 70 percent effective at preventing infant hospitalizations.
• This is another example of real world data showing the impact of these very safe and efficacious drugs.

Tuesday, Feb. 13 at 8 a.m. is the next Morning Medical Update. More people than ever are surviving pancreatic cancer, but it remains one of the most challenging cancers to diagnose and treat. Learn what helped one survivor beat the odds.

ATTENTION MEDIA: Please note access is with Microsoft Teams:

Join on your computer or mobile app

Click here to join the meeting

Meeting ID: 235 659 792 451
Passcode: 6CSfGE

Download Teams | Join on the web

Or call in (audio only)

+1 913-318-8863,566341546#   United States, Kansas City

TVU Grid link: UoK_Health_SDI

Restream links: Facebook.com/kuhospital

YouTube.com/kuhospital

Send advance questions to medicalnewsnetwork@kumc.edu.