With one glance, you would never guess what 25-year-old Aimee Buckley of Pocatello, Idaho, has been through.
She was diagnosed with epilepsy when she was 8 years old. Seizures became her routine. “I’ve lived with them almost my entire life,” Buckley said.
Her father, Lynn Buckley, said it was tough. “There literally was one year where she hardly got out of bed,” he said.
She tried every treatment her doctors offered, but nothing worked. Unfortunately, the medications she tried made her sick. At age 14, Aimee Buckley underwent resective brain surgery removing part of her brain tissue, but to no avail.
Finally, Intermountain Healthcare’s Dr. Tawnya Constantino at Intermountain Medical Center offered Aimee Buckley a new treatment called RNS, or responsive neurostimulation. In 2016, a neurosurgeon implanted the device into her skull. “When the device detects that seizures are starting, it actually administers a stimulation to that electrode in an attempt to stop the seizures from developing,” Constantino said.
Constantino said the NeuroPace option seemed like a good fit for Buckley because Dr. Constantino had already identified the general location causing Buckley’s seizures, making it easier to prevent further seizure activity. “They don’t feel it going off. They don’t hardly know it’s there,” Constantino said.
Since then, Buckley is proud to say she has almost been seizure free. She had a couple minor seizures she was not aware of but were recorded on her device.