After undergoing brain surgery to remove a benign tumour at the age of 4, Sadie and her family thought that was the end of her brain surgery journey. That successful procedure allowed her to have a normal, happy and healthy childhood. However, as a teenager, Sadie became sick and when she told her dad, who is a doctor, that she was “zoning out” and feeling confused, he recognized these signs as seizures, and from there, her life completely changed.
She was scheduled to go for her driver’s license test the following day, but instead, she was diagnosed with epilepsy. She started medication, but these did not help the seizures. In May 2020, skilled Alberta Children’s Hospital surgeons drilled probes onto Sadie’s brain to gain in-depth information about her seizures. The team used a high-tech piece of equipment called the Robotic Stereotactic Assistant (ROSA), which was purchased through community support. This equipment allows doctors to precisely place electrodes deep into the brain in a less invasive procedure than those conducted prior to ROSA. These electrodes allowed doctors to use the probes to examine Sadie’s brain. They would turn on a certain probe, and it would move her arm, or her tongue would taste spicy. This was an intimidating process, but Alberta Children’s Hospital doctors and nurses made sure she knew what was going on and helped alleviate her fears.
Doctors determined that Sadie’s hippocampus and amygdala were not working properly, as the tumour she had removed when she was a child had impacted those sections of her brain — they also discovered she had been having up to 100 seizures a day. Sadie underwent surgery to resect these portions of her brain. She recovered from surgery in hospital and in the days following needed to “test” her walking skills. Again, this was a scary experience, because at first Sadie couldn’t feel her legs, but the occupational therapists helped her feel safe. Two months after her surgeries, Sadie was back in school. She says these surgeries and the expertise of the Alberta Children’s Hospital helped her return to the person she used to be.
Sadie is now seizure-free and describes her experience as life-changing, she now is taking Health Sciences at the University of Calgary, specializing in Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies, with aspirations of becoming an occupational therapist for children with brain injuries.
