Texas Girl, 6, Leaves Hospital Walking after Half of Brain Removed

By Alexander Toldt
18:18, August 8th 2008
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Texas Girl, 6, Leaves Hospital Walking after Half of Brain Removed

A Texas girl was brought back home and is in a safe state after she had half her brain removed in June, according to aWJZ.com report.

Jessie Hall, a 6-year-old girl from Aledo, Tx., suffers from a rare illness called Rasmussen’s encephalitis. The disease also known as Chronic Focal Encephalitis (CFE) is characterized by frequent and severe seizures, loss of motor skills and speech, hemiparesis (paralysis on one side of the body), encephalitis (inflammation of the brain), dementia, and mental deterioration. The illness eats away at the brain affecting a single cerebral hemisphere. It generally occurs in children under the age of 10.

The little girl was recovering in Cook's Children's Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, since July. She was released from hospital on Thursday and spent her first night at home after several weeks. The Chronic Focal Encephalitis caused Jessie to suffer uncontrollable seizures and lose the use of her left arm.

Doctors at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore removed the right hemisphere of her brain through a risky surgery on June 11. The hospital does about a dozen of these surgeries each year. Fortunately, the daring surgery intervention saved Jessie from the rare and eventually mentally devastating neurological disease. After the surgery, she returned at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth.

After the surgery Jessie’s left side was paralyzed. She had to learn to swallow again. Cris Hall, Jessie' father said that any movement his daughter is now making is happening from the other side of the brain than before because the motor cortex from the ill side was removed.

Mr Hall described Jessie’s rehabilitation as “a miracle of medicine and God."

Doctors had to cut her hair off in order to remove the ill part of her brain. Now little Jessie said she would like to grow her hair long in order to hide the scar on her skull.



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