Summerlin author details battle with epilepsy in new book

Eleven years of "seizure chaos." That's how Deanna Brady, 28, describes her experiences with epilepsy.

Brady, a Summerlin resident, has penned a book, "Piece of Mind," about her battle with epilepsy. It is being released at an appropriate time, as November is National Epilepsy Awareness Month.

Her experiences began at 14. She had small complex partial seizures, so small they would go unnoticed by those around her. But Brady noticed.

"The first one was while I was taking the algebra final in the eighth grade, and the numbers and words on the page were moving," she said.

For five years, she didn't realize she was having seizures. The symptoms changed as the years progressed. Her episodes now were harder to ignore.

Sometimes she saw a ring of black hindering her vision. Other times her muscles would tense up. She also saw an illusion of a woman with long brown hair and experienced a "reverse Star Wars" sensation of movement.

"I could have 10 a day," she said of her episodes. "I'd feel an out-of-body experience and didn't know what it was ... I felt like a freak."

Doctors in Las Vegas kept switching her medications, taking a wait-and-see attitude, but nothing seemed to work. The episodes intruded on her day-to-day life. She had to give up driving for a period of time.

Her husband, David, founder of the Brady Realty Group, knew when she was having a seizure.

"She'd get this look on her face, kind of like a child waking from a night fright," he said.

It wasn't until her first generalized tonic-clonic, or grand mal, seizure the day before her wedding that she started going to neurologists. A generalized tonic-clonic seizure is a seizure involving the entire body.

About five years ago, while at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, a fellow elementary education student, an older woman, overheard Brady talking about her epilepsy and how her doctors were perplexed by it. The woman came over and strongly urged Brady to go to the University of California, Los Angeles, for testing.

Brady took the suggestion to heart.

"If it wasn't for her, the tumor that was found in my brain through testing and surgery at UCLA would have laid unnoticed until it was too late," she said.

At the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, doctors put her through a battery of tests, including EEGs, MRIs and CAT scans. She was hospitalized for a two-week EEG test during which doctors intentionally deprived her of food and sleep -- tactics to induce a seizure so they could study her brain as it occurred.

Tests revealed she had a tumor the size of a large grape growing in her brain. They needed to operate, but Deanna Brady had news of her own.

"I said, 'I'm pregnant,' " she recalled.

The operation had to wait until after Bridgett, the couple's first child, was born.

The Bradys returned to UCLA seven months after the birth. The left side of Deanna Brady's head was shaved in preparation for surgery.

"I felt silly that I was uncomfortable with that, of all things to worry about," she said. "But my hair parted just right to cover it after."

The six-hour surgery turned into an eight-hour one because the tumor had tunneled deeper than doctors had first thought. The tumor was in the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that deals with memory tasks -- forming, organizing and storage. It also connects emotions and senses, such as smell, to memories.

She emerged with a partially shaved head, 41 staples and a scar shaped like a question mark.

Sandra Dewar, a clinical nurse specialist for the epilepsy seizure disorder center at UCLA, said surgery is the standard of care for epilepsy caused by a tumor.

"It's not new. It's not experimental," she said. "We've been doing epilepsy surgery for years. In fact, this is ... our 50th anniversary."

These days, Deanna Brady is a full-time mother to Bridgett, 4, and Molly, 2. The couple are expecting a baby boy in a few months.

The full name of her book is "Piece of Mind: My Journey to Peace Amid Seizures, a Tumor, and Brain Surgery." It's available at amazon.com. She plans to write more books, including children's books.

Since the surgery, Brady has had no more episodes. The other changes she has noticed?

"I'm more alert and my memory is better," she said.

Contact Summerlin/Summerlin South View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 387-2949.