 When I was diagnosed by Dr. McDermott with epilepsy I would say that I felt in a way oh my god finally somebody knows what's wrong with me but at the same time I was completely devastated. Sharon was new to me and I met her here and she had tried various therapies for epilepsy and it was at that point unclear as to whether or not she had epilepsy. Sharon had several seizures while she was in the monitoring unit and we were able to demonstrate that the seizures were coming from both the left and the right temporal lobe so both sides of her brain. I recall Dr. McDermott saying when she proposed the RNS device was this is going to be a very good option for you I think Sharon because it's going to be able to record your seizures it's gonna be able to tell us a lot about when you've had a seizure. I had the surgery in the device implanted September 22nd 2015. Something tells me that date will stick in my mind. The neurosurgeon Dr. Schwartz places the device in on in the patient's skull. It recognizes seizure patterns and then stimulates when it recognizes a certain pattern. It can do this up to hundreds of times a day so not necessarily to stop seizures but to stop little patterns that could potentially turn into seizures. To scan it there's just a magnet it's basically a laptop with a wand that is the magnet and you scan it across the implant that's on the side of my head and then you transmit it to Dr. McDermott twice a week. What we have seen in Sharon's case is that patterns that have previously turned into seizures stop and actual seizures that have become full-blown seizures before they ever turn into a seizure they kind of quote-unquote peter out. My last appointment I said do you think it's getting better you know and she said well yeah it's getting better you've only had two seizures in the last month you know. What gave me the fortitude honestly was Dr. McDermott and she has definitely been a fabulous neurologist to work through things together.