A man suffering from severe seizures had a life-changing surgery using advanced brain mapping technology used by Covenant.
Marco Hicks, the patient, said he has Epilepsy, which makes it hard for him to live a normal life.
He said it took him years to decide to go through with the surgery, but he had to do it for his family.
“To make sure I was the dad that needed to be here, and the husband that needed to be here, and that meant going through something that may have been a little different from what most fathers do,” Hicks said.
Before the surgery, Hicks said he was going from medicine to medicine and the older he got, the less the medicine helped.
According to Covenant, doctors utilized the latest technology to remove the parts of his brain that cause his seizures.
“The whole procedure was the ability to, with the patient awake, map out eloquent areas for speech, where prior to resecting a part of the brain that was causing him problems,” said Harold Smith, a neurosurgeon at Covenant.
He said the surgical crew kept him awake to make sure his speech and sight weren’t being affected.
Michael Barrett, a speech language pathologist brought in to assist during surgery, said he was there to help make sure Hicks was okay during the procedure.
“What I’m doing is showing him pictures when he’s brought to a consensus state, to make sure we’re not encroaching in the language parts of his brain,” Barrett said.
Hicks said he’s excited to go back to teaching and learn more about a life without seizures.
“I’m just gonna have to explain to my students that I got attacked by a pirate in the end and I won cause I’m just a teacher and I’m not the richest person in the world,” Hicks said.
