Cheerleader Has Part of Brain Removed to Stop Seizures

A former high school cheerleader who suffered a massive head injury says the subsequent, constant seizures she had stopped only after she underwent surgery to remove part of her brain.

Whitney Henry, now 20 years old, was the victim of a cheerleading stunt gone bad. During her junior year of high school,Rift Gold she and her teammates were practicing a trick where they threw a girl up into the air, she told ABC News. But something went terribly wrong.

The girl suddenly jumped as she was flying through the air, and her head struck Henry's face with crushing force. Henry lost her two front teeth, but thought the worst was over after she had them replaced. It wasn't.

Six months later, she experienced her first seizure, according to ABC News. She says she couldn't talk for a full two minutes and had a strong feeling of deja vu.

"I didn't know if I was just different or if I was having a seizure or what," Henry told ABC.

Doctors later informed her that it was a seizure. RIFT PlatinumIt would be her first of dozens that would become increasingly stronger and more frequent until Henry was having between 30 and 50 of them a day.

Though they didn't cause her to tremble and convulse, the seizures left her temporarily paralyzed and paranoid and would sometimes send her into a bizarre state of euphoria afterwards.

"Usually I would need someone to calm me down because I would get so paranoid and so shaken up," Henry told ABC. rift gold"And if I had a cluster of seizures, four or five back to back, I'd have a sense of euphoria."

Once she was so giddy and out of it that teachers sent her home from school.

"I was considered a distraction to the classroom," she said. "They thought I was high."

Dr. Shenandoah Robinson, the director of pediatric epilepsy surgery at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital, said severe seizures like Henry's can be totally life-changing and debilitating.

"It's very disruptive," she told AOL Health. "And there are also social implications."

What was so frustrating was that physicians couldn't properly diagnose Henry's condition. RIFT PlatinumShe tried six different neurologists and 13 different drugs but wasn't getting any better.

"It was maddening," she told ABC. "I had no quality of life at all."

Her schoolday was often interrupted by seizures. Workouts and anything else that elevated her heart rate caused more of them, rendering the typically active Henry practically sedentary. Thanks to her lack of exercise and the side effects of her seizure medications, she gained about 45 pounds in a short period of time, according to ABC.

"I looked awful and I felt awful and I had no self-esteem," she said.

The attacks had an impact on her entire life. She stopped doing well in school and her grades took a nose dive.

Ultimately, doctors diagnosed her condition as the result of a traumatic brain injury from the accident that had left a contusion -- a severe and permanent bruise on the brainTERA Gold -- which was causing the epileptic symptoms.

Dr. Michael Handler, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Children's Hospital in Denver, Colo., was the one who realized what was going on and recommended that Henry have surgery to remove a section of her temporal lobe about the size of a golf ball. She said yes right away.

Robinson said the benefits of such a procedure far outweigh the risks.

"It's somewhat risky -- it's brain surgery," she told AOL Health. "But compared to having persistent seizures, it's not that risky. Epilepsy surgery is much less dangerous than if you have to go for emergency brain surgery. The risk of serious problems is usually under 1 percent."

The operation Henry had can cause loss of peripheral vision -- which the former cheerleader hasn't experienced -- or some memory trouble, according to Robinson. But seizures can also cause serious impairment of cognitive functions, she said.

Henry has had some after-effects -- she must avoid high-impact exercise and gets sick more easily than others -- but she's been free of the seizures for a year and a half. And she hasn't been happier in a long time.

"I guess that part of my brain was holding me back," she told ABC. "I'm excited to have a fresh start."