Without support from her father, Al, Jody Miller would fall off the couch in her family´s Maryland home. At three and a half she suffered seizures every few minutes, the result of Rasmussen´s encephalitis. 

"She would just topple over to the left as she were a puppet and someone had pulled her strings", says her mother, Lynn. Jody also lost the use of her left arm and leg.

Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital proposed removing the diseased right side of her brain . "basically they said, 'You can have your child  the way she is now but without the seizures,' " Lynn recalls. "My mind was made up in an instant."

Patches covering Jody before she enters the operating room will allow her body functions to be monitored during the dangerous surgery.

A Joyous Recovery

Life begins again with Sunday school four weeks after surgery when Jody's hair is still stubble. Eight months later and completely free from seizures, she frolics with her mother at a local pool  and runs with the other four-year-olds at day care.

The plasticity of a child's brain has let neurons in her left hemisphere make multitude of new connections and take over many of the functions once performed  by the right hemisphere. Theraphy several times a week has helped, though it cannot restore the full movement to her left side. 

"She's a bright, lovely young lady who doesn't use her arm very well", says Dr. Freeman. "That's the bottom line".

Extract from the article 

"Quiet miracles of the

BRAIN"

By Joel L. Swerdlow

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC senior writer

Photographs by Joe McNally

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

JUNE 1995.