Brain surgery puts an end to seizures

A medical breakthrough has put one Eastern Iowa man back behind the wheel. Tim "TJ" Jensen has suffered from weekly seizures for 23 years. He had to give up a portion of his brain to get his driver's license back.

TJ Jensen remembers that feeling he used to get right before a seizure strikes. Jensen says, "Butterflies in my stomach. You can feel it coming before it actually happens."

Jensen's mother, Cindy, adds, "If he was just sitting with a group of people, people might not even notice he was having a seizure. But I could tell, by the look in his eyes."

The Solon man has suffered from Epilepsy since he was four-years-old. Medications tamed the seizures for many years. But life was unpredictable. "And they just kept on getting worse and worse till November 28th of 2003, I think, when I wrecked my truck," says Jensen.

Jensen doesn't remember driving his old truck off a bridge. That accident led him to the Iowa Comprehensive Epilepsy Program at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

Neurosurgeons spent a year studying Jensen 's brain. One test required Jensen to stay overnight in a specially-designed patient room. For two weeks, Jensen lived in the room with electrodes and wires attached directly to his brain.

UIHC Neurosurgeon Dr. Matthew Howard says, "Instead of just being able to detect enormous epileptic discharges we could then record the individual little impulses from single brain cells in the brain. So that was quite a breakthrough."

From those tests, doctors determined that three parts of Jensen's brain caused the seizures. So they removed them. "And he's got the scars to prove it. He's very proud of those scars," says his mother.

The 28-year-old has been seizure free for fourteen months now. "I can drive," says Jensen. Getting his driver's license back is a new beginning.

His mother says she's very proud. "He's going to buy a house and he's going to be on his own and he wouldn't have had that before." Jensen and his doctors say his future is very promising.

The most fascinating part of Jensen's experience is the research doctors conducted on his brain. While doctors waited for him to have a seizure, they used the implanted electrodes to study brain function. These experiments have led to international research projects at University Hospitals in Iowa City.