Is there a successful cure for Epilepsy?

Former epilepsy sufferer Natalie Wright is looking forward to doing the things most teenagers take for granted.

"Swim is a big one, go back to school and my job, just hang out with my friends," the 15-year-old aspiring hairdresser said in Brisbane.

Those simple youthful pleasures were once impossible.

But the teenager has begun a new and healthy chapter of her life after undergoing groundbreaking surgery to remove a part of her brain which was causing up to 30 seizures a day.

Natalie, from Airlie Beach on the Whitsundays coast, is the first child in Queensland to undergo brain surgery to cure intractable epilepsy - the most severe form of epilepsy which does not respond to medication.

She underwent a craniotomy at Brisbane's Royal Children's Hospital on November 4, which involved inserting electrodes deep into her brain to closely monitor the effects of her seizures.
Electrical activity in Natalie's brain was monitored for nine days until the exact location of the epileptic activity was located.

Neurosurgeons then removed the affected area - all while Natalie was awake.

"I couldn't wait (to have the surgery) `cause I was just sick of having seizures," said Natalie as she prepared to leave hospital.

"It did (frighten me) but I was sort of like, well, it's a good thing that they're doing this, because nothing else was working."

Two earlier operations to remove abnormal brain tissue failed.

Natalie's painful seizures, which began at age eight, continued and eventually crippled the right side of her body.

Jenny Gaylard said her daughter, who spent the past five months in hospital, had been unable to attend school or do activities with friends such as shopping, swimming or going to the movies.
"(Her friends) were going to school ... they were going to the movies and they were going shopping and gibbering about boys - all the things that teenage girls do and she was basically stuck at home," Ms Gaylard said.

"(But) now she can walk and be independent again, she can clean her own teeth and brush her hair.

"And now she wants to go home and go shopping with her girlfriends, like teenage girls like doing."

Consultant paediatric neurologist Kate Sinclair said Natalie's seizures were occurring in a "very unusual" part of her brain not easily accessible by the electrodes.

Surgeons had to exercise extreme caution during the operation because the affected tissue was near parts of the brain which allowed her to walk or speak, she said.

"For her, the success is extremely good," Dr Sinclair said.

"... Hopefully she's got a very good outlook."