The dangerous and delicate
surgery was carried out just three months ago - and now Cameron is
already well enough to go to school.
The drastic treatment was
needed because a rare bug was eating away at the right-hand side of
her brain.
Parents Shelly and Casey
can't believe her miraculous recovery either.
At the age of three, Cameron
developed the devastating brain disorder Rasmussen's Encephalitis.
This one-in-a-million disease ate away at the right side of her
brain, triggering violent and unpredictable epileptic fits.
"She'd just be standing
talking to you," said dad Casey, a 35-year-old financial adviser.
"Then before you could blink an eye she would fall on the floor in
a seizure."
Cameron was plagued by up to
15 fits every day that began just half-an-hour after she woke
up.
Shelly, 34, said: "We would
get her feeling good for just 20 to 30 minutes each morning. We
were aware how precious that time was and how we had to enjoy it.
Then she would collapse with her first seizure and they just
continued." Cameron fell over so often that her parents decided the
best way to protect her was to put her in a bike helmet all day
long.
Doctors told the couple that,
left untreated, Cameron's condition would only get worse. Seizures
would be more frequent, she would gradually lose her mental
faculties and could become paralysed. A high-risk operation - known
as a hemispherectomy - to remove the entire right side of her brain
was their last hope.
"In the beginning I was
willing to do whatever it took to not have them take anything out
of my child's head," said Casey. "But eventually we had to accept
that it was our only option."
The painstaking surgery took
eight hours and involved drilling into and removing a large piece
of skull before the affected parts of the brain were removed bit by
bit.
The effect of the surgery is
like having a major stroke. With the removal of the right side of
her brain, Cameron was unable to move her left side - one side of
the brain controls the opposite side of the body. The right side
also controls imagination and creativity while the left stores
facts and reacts logically-as the graphic at the top of the page
shows.
But intensive physical
therapy helped get her back on her feet, and Cameron has started
school as a typically chatty little girl. The only signs of her
trauma are a slight limp and a scar underneath her hair.
"I feel as though our little
girl is back," said Shelly, a former bank manager who is now a
stay-at-home mum.
"Cameron always loved to sing
and dance and perform, but as her seizures got worse she stopped
doing that. It was like losing a child. To have her back talking
and chatting and carrying on is what we wanted more than
anything."
Dr George Gallo, one of the
surgical team at the John Hopkins Medical Institute in Baltimore,
US, is constantly surprised by children's quick recovery after such
ops.
He said: "I always think that
these children will wake up not talking, not moving and dependent
on their parents for the rest of their lives.
"But that is not true. If
they were sitting next to you, you would not be able to tell that
they had had half their brain removed. At Cameron's age the brain
has a remarkable capacity to reorganise itself, and one side of the
brain can effectively take over the functions of the other damaged
or removed side."
Shelly said: "Her quality of
life is now 100 times better. I know she can't use the left side of
her body as well but there is no way I would trade this for what
she was like before. We've got our little girl back and that's
wonderful."
Cameron's story is told in
Extraordinary People: Living With Half a Brain on Channel Five at
9pm on October 1.
We're just so grateful that
we've got our lovely little girl back
HOW THE BRAIN
WORKS
Left half of the brain
controls the right side of the body
It is seen as the practical
side
It gives logic and common
sense
It also stores facts and
analyses what we see
Right half controls the left
side of our body
It is seen as the creative
part of the brain
It is where our imagination
lies
It is also the part of us
that encourages risk-taking
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