A harrowing medical decision for the parents of a local toddler. They agreed to surgery to remove parts of their daughter’s brain, to spare her from damaging seizures. The Rocky River 2-year-old was having an average of 10 seizures every day, and they were taking a toll on her developing brain. So after her parents exhausted medication and dietary treatments without success, they opted for brain surgery. When Hazel Sakai was just 11 months old, her mother, Allie, noticed something different about her youngest child. “She’d just be staring and her eyes would water a little bit and you couldn’t get her out of it,” said Sakai. She was diagnosed with infantile spasms, a form of epilepsy. The seizures got worse, and Allie saw them causing developmental delays and regression.
