Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 10, 1995 TAG: 9506120065
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Tana Linkous had her first epileptic seizure in 1979 when she was a college senior at West Virginia University in Morgantown.
It caused her to fall into the door of a 7-Eleven, but she wasn't hurt.
But during a February 1994 ice storm, when she was alone with her young son in their Roanoke home, a severe seizure came. She slipped, hit her mouth on the piano, bit through her lip and broke some teeth.
That seizure caused her to consider surgical treatment, and as a result, a picture of her brain is on the cover of the June issue of National Geographic.
While Linkous was at the University of Virginia Medical Center, getting a head frame screwed to her skull and electrodes inserted so doctors could look deep inside her brain, a photographer asked her if she wanted to be in the magazine.
She recalled that she said yes, partly because she was groggy and distracted, but mainly because she wanted to help people know more about epilepsy.
In the 15 years before Linkous had a small portion of her brain removed in an effort to stop the seizures, they came frequently and were severe, often briefly leaving her unconscious on the floor.
"I had them in all sort of stores. I've gotten to know the Harris Teeter manager well," she said Friday as she joked about her new status as "cover girl."
Her husband, golf pro Dickie Linkous, and their son Drew, 9, are proud of her desire to speak out about epilepsy, she said.
No one in the family ever has tried to hide her problem, she said.
Linkous wears a medical information bracelet that includes a slip of paper on which she has written "I do not need ER transit unless injured."
"People need to know how to treat epileptics," she said. "Some people can lay down and have seizures and get up and go on."
Her son always has kept calm when the attacks come, she said.
The seizures always are preceded by an aura. She begins to feel warm, and "when I'd tell Drew that something was happening, he'd just say: `Now, give me your glasses and please lie down.'''
As soon as the family's copy of National Geographic arrived, Drew took it around the neighborhood to show off.
A copy of her brain scan is on the cover, and one of the fitting of the calibrated head frame - that Linkous has titled "Frankenstein Dripping Blood" - accompanies the article, "Quiet Mysteries of the Brain."
"It's all very painful," the magazine quoted Linkous as saying while the head frame was put in place.
"But don't say that," she said Friday.
She doesn't want to scare anyone away from considering the surgery, she said.
Linkous went to UVa Thursday to talk with two young women who also are epileptics and who might be able to find relief the way she did.
During a seven-hour operation performed last November by Dr. Edward Laws, a scoop of neurons was removed from the parietal lobe of Linkous' brain. The parietal lobe is behind the frontal lobe and beneath the crown of the skull. Some of the neurons there were "generating abnormal activity," said UVa's Dr. Fritz Dreifuss.
Dreifuss, vice chairman of neurology in the medical school, has treated Linkous for 13 years, and suggested the surgery to her two years ago. The operation has become increasingly popular as a treatment for epilepsy, Dreifuss said.
Since her operation, Linkous' seizures have come less often and are "much less severe," he said. "She doesn't lose consciousness anymore.
"It's hoped that over time they will peter out all together," Dreifuss said.
Linkous has noticed other changes, including an improvement in her concentration when she's reading and in her ability to recall the past.
"I find things slipping in from childhood that I never thought I'd remember," she said.
by CNB