Will It Work?

Kinsley lay still on the white hospital bed sheets. The spot light sizzled at the top layer of skin as she morbidly rested on the operation table. A blue sheet covered her entire body with the exception of two square sections above both her temples. These sections of her skull outlined two areas that the surgeon opened so that he could extract brain cells. All the while Kinsley lay still, knocked out by anesthesia.

The Stanford Medical Center examined pieces of Kinsley’s brain to determine if an auto-immune disease was attacking her brain. They theorized that white blood cells attacking Kinsley’s brain had precipitated her digression from a stable child living with epilepsy to one unable to respond to simple questions. Both biopsied areas failed to confirm their hunch.

When that theory fizzled and Kinsley continued to struggle with petite mal epilepsy (a form of 5-60 second epileptic seizures) and cognitive decline, her physicians decided to try something different: steroids. She was put on her first set of steroids on February 18th, 2009 and once again on March 25th, 2009. At the start of each cycle, the old Kinsley returned. She could communicate and participate in activities like coloring and reading at school. In fact, Kinsley became the second child at her school to read in the principles reading chair which stands as a very big honor. However, this glimmer of recovery was just that, a glimmer.

With each administration of the steroids Kinsley and her family enjoyed only a week or so of the former Kinsley before she drifted back into isolation. On May 11,th Kinsley dove back into a third cycle of steroids in an effort to tackle what plagues her jumbled nervous system. The procedure lasted over three days, requiring four to five hours of intravenous treatment each day. The upside for this third cycle is small according to Genée, Kinsley‘s mother. Although the second cycle of steroids temporarily “awakened” Kinsley, it impaired her ability to sleep and also produced an allergic reaction in the form of a rash all over her body. Genée sometimes feels that her daughter is being experimented upon rather than treated.

This next cycle of steroids will most likely be Kinsley’s last. If it fails to produce dramatic results, Genée and the neurologist may look into a drug called L Dopa, a drug made famous in Oliver Sacks book, Awakenings, and the film of the same name starring Robin Williams. L Dopa produces dopamine in the brain and causes certain parts of the brain associated with Parkinson’s disease. In the six years of her illness, Kinsley has tried one treatment after another, but nothing has reversed the overall decline. Those close to her grasp tightly any hope they find.