By the age of 5, Rachel, who lives on a farm near a small town
in Iowa, had been struggling with seizures brought on by
intractable epilepsy for nearly three years. During these
episodes, her body would jerk and shake and then go limp. Her
lips would turn blue, her breathing would become shallow and her
eyes would move rapidly back and forth. Afterward, she couldn't
walk, was temporarily disoriented and confused, and suffered
short-term memory loss. As Rachel's seizures became worse and
she continued to lose strength on her left side, imaging tests
showed that her brain's right hemisphere was atrophying. Seizure
medications failed to work, and her parents felt like they were
losing her — both cognitively and physically. Ultimately, Rachel
underwent a dramatic surgery at UCLA called a cerebral
hemispherectomy, in which half of her brain was removed in the
hopes of stopping the seizures and improving her cognitive
development. "We were devastated at first," said Rachel's
mother, Roxanne Cogil. "But after much r