Epilepsy controlled Joanna Boyd’s life. A surgical procedure changed that.
Back before the surgery, Boyd said, her typical day consisted of getting up, making sure to take her medication, thinking of how she would get around, and “never knowing what to expect, from day to day, from moment to moment or if I was going to have one (a seizure) and die in front of my kids,” she said.
Now?
“I get up and decide what I want to do by myself — go shopping, go to church, drive, help other people. I still have health problems, it has limitations, but I do what I can. I am not working, but I wish (I was). It’s no fun being on disability.”
Boyd, 38, of Olivehurst was told that, as a baby, she had seizures, and that, as a youngster, she would just collapse.
She does not remember her childhood. “Because of seizures, or hitting my head, or the seizure medications, I don’t know which,” she said, but she does remember having problems in school. “I have been on and off medications since I was a young kid.”
The medical problems contributed to her not being able to hold a job, attend college or drive a car. She was divorced and, due to her health, she said, became distant from her older daughter and had to give up the younger girl for adoption.
The dramatic change came in 2006 when she decided on undergoing vagus nerve stimulation, or VNS, a surgery that implanted a pacemaker-like instrument in the left side of her chest. The device produces weak electrical signals that help prevent electrical bursts in the brain that cause seizures. The surgery was performed in Roseville.
I have the VNS and it has completely changed my life. I’m so glad that I got it. 🙂