BRAIN WITH PING PONG BALLS
Jessie Hill, a six-year-old girl, had half of her brain removed surgically, by Dr. Ben Carson at John's Hopkins Children's Centre in Baltimore. Jessie was a normal child until she was 6 years old. That is when she began having seizures. Her parents learned she had a disease on the right side of her brain called Rasmussen’s Encephalitis. If left untreated, it would spread to the left side of her brain and eventually kill her. Dr. Ben Carson recommended hemispherectomy surgery and removed the diseased right half of Jessie's brain in a surgery that lasted hours long. The surgery was followed by rehabilitation that helped Jessie regain all the lost functions. In an interview, Jessie recalls, “I remember just being. I wanted to go home. I didn’t really understand why I was there like — I just didn’t want to be any part of therapy or anything because it was painful.” During her treatment in Baltimore, her parents formed the Hemispherectomy Foundation. INTERESTING TO KNOW: W h