ARMENIAN MAN THANKS NORTH SHORE-LIJ DOCTORS FOR MULTIPLE, LIFE-SAVING SURGERIES
Watch List News
Aug 9 2013
August 9th, 2013
Patient – and his mother – thank the doctors who monitored him for
more than 25 years.
Manhasset, NY (PRWEB) August 09, 2013
Three months to the day after being admitted to North Shore University
Hospital (NSUH) for treatment of brain seizures, a 30-year-old Armenian
man had the opportunity Thursday to thank the two local surgeons who
changed his life.
“I am so grateful to you all,” Gagik Hovhannisyan of Yerevan, Armenia,
said via an interpreter during a press conference held at NSUH.
“For the first time in my life, I am not having seizures,” said Mr.
Hovhannisyan, with his mother by his side and his father and sister
joining in from Armenia via Skype. “I can go home, drive a car, and do
all the things that I could never do before. This is a miracle to me.”
Mr. Hovhannisyan was seven in 1990 when he was brought to Cohen
Children’s Medical Center (then Schneider’s Children’s Hospital) under
the auspices of the Russian Gift of Life and the International Rotary.
His mother, Jasmin Khazarian, was told her son had been born with
a congenital heart condition known as Tetralogy of Fallot – a rare
condition that occurs in about five out of every 10,000 babies.
Vincent Parnell, MD surgeon-in-chief at Cohen Children’s Medical
Center, performed surgery to correct that condition.
Due to his heart condition, Mr. Hovhannisyan later developed a seizure
disorder as a result of an infection that developed in his brain. When
he was 16, Russian Gift of Life stepped in again and had him brought
back to the children’s hospital. His cardiac situation was stable,
but the anti-seizure medications were not doing the job. Doctors
decided he would eventually need brain surgery to remove the lesions
causing the seizures.
Through it all, Mr. Hovhannisyan refused to give in to his disorder.
He taught himself how to play the piano, learned English, mastered
computers and graduated from Yeravan State University. As his proud
mother said during the press conference, “My son never believed he
was sick.”
On May 8, Mr. Hovhannisyan returned to the U.S. and was admitted to
NSUH. Three weeks later he underwent a 10-hour diagnostic epilepsy
surgery with Ashesh Mehta, MD, North Shore-LIJ Health System’s director
of epilepsy surgery, to pinpoint where the seizures began and what
areas were affected.
“During the first surgery, 210 electrodes were implanted by opening
Gagik’s skull to determine the exact location of the seizures,” Dr.
Mehta said. “After monitoring his brain activity for several days, we
performed a second surgery that lasted seven hours. In this procedure,
the seizure-producing areas of the brain were removed. Through all
of this, great care had to be taken to avoid harm to the brain areas
that control movement, vision, memory, language and feeling.”
Mr. Hovhannisyan was discharged on June 14. To date, he is seizure-free
with no impairment to his speech, language or memory skills.
“As a mother, I gave birth to my son, but the doctors at the North
Shore-LIJ Health System gave him a life,” said Ms. Khazarian, who
surprised Dr. Parnell during the press conference when she presented
him with a hand drawing he had done 23 years ago to explain Mr.
Hovhannisyan’s heart condition.
To learn more about Mr. Hovhannisyan’s
extraordinary experience, please watch the video at:
From: Baghdasarian
http://www.northshorelij.com/hospitals/video-library?channelId=123432bc283e421da3e31e3377f2c7f6&channelListId&mediaId=48ab574a6b414827891ba85ac765d9a0
http://www.watchlistnews.com/2013/08/09/armenian-man-thanks-north-shore-lij-doctors-for-multiple-life-saving-surgeries/