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w22dheartlivie 
"Kitty Lover"
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 Posted - 01/07/2009 : 19:23:01
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This story stirs a lot in me. The developmental center where I worked for many years had its inauspicious beginning as "The Epileptic Village" in the very early part of the 20th century. Many of my clients had spent their lives there, although many others who came there later did not have epilepsy. At various points, I spent time in the quite large medical records building, reading about the things that had happened to my older clients in the course of their lives. Some were also subjects in the brain surgeries of the 1950s, others were subjects in the very early trials of the early anti-seizure drugs. One fellow I recall was in both. It has left me with such ambivalence regarding the stories of persons like H.M.
Just how many people benefitted from the outcomes of drug trials and surgeries can't be known. Certainly to some extent, every person who has epilepsy today. Some are greatly helped by the tools developed for treatment today. Some are not so much. New tools are being devised in the battle every day. Modern day surgeries involve implantation of very mild stimulation leads into key brain centers, that work much in the same way a pacemaker works on the heart, serving to circumvent seizures before they occur. The lives of some of the clients I had are so vastly improved by this that they are seizure-free for the first time in their lives - some 40 years or more. Such interventions are still reserved for those who most desperately need them. Sadly, a small number of those persons aren't helped by even these devices. Certainly mild electrical stimulation (NOT ECT) is less intrusive and invasive than removing large chunks of brain, as happened to H.M. I think we must bear in mind that anything that is available today relies on the efforts of early researchers, using relatively crude tools to perform what we today would consider barbaric and hackneyed operations. Certainly at one point, an appendectomy was a life-threatening procedure that is now done as an out-patient surgery.
I've been reminded of all of this during the past week as the tragic story of Jett Travolta has been reported. My heart goes out to them. It angers me that there are those who would use the death of this young man to launch new assaults upon Scientology and desecrate the grief this family feels. It has never mattered whether he had autism or seizure disorder. Frankly, it has never been our business. What has mattered to the conspiracy theorists who spend so much time haranguing those who do follow this ...whatever it is... is that maybe - or not - he was not taking seizure medications because Scientology doesn't believe in psychiatric drugs and psychiatrists and that somehow John and Kelly are responsible for the death of their beloved son. Has anyone bothered wondering if seizure meds were even warranted in this case? Not everyone who once took such meds take them forever. Do they care about John and Kelly and Jett? No. They care about exploiting their grief in order to bash Scientology. It's disgraceful.
That H.M.'s life was affected by the surgery he received is obvious. But he lived until he was 82. Not so many people with severe seizure disorder live so long. The seizures have their effects. Brain cells die during them. Brain damage persists. What the press doesn't seem to report is that while the majority of people who have seizures don't die during them, a minority do. The hidden part of the miracle of H.M.'s life is that he did benefit from the surgery - he lived for over 50 years, relatively healthy and whole. Sadly, Jett did not. |
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RIP H.M.
