SCHERERVILLE | Many women face difficulties in getting pregnant. Some resort to medications or in vitro fertilization. But a Dyer woman's journey to motherhood involved an altogether different tactic: brain surgery.
Katie Bieker started having epileptic seizures when she was 18. She thought she might never have a baby because she was on so many epilepsy medications and experiencing seizures up to three times a week.
After years of failed treatment for the disorder, Bieker was referred to a Chicago neurologist who specializes in women's epilepsy. Dr. Elizabeth Gerard, of Northwestern Medicine, assured Bieker she could help her have a baby and potentially cure her of the seizures if she underwent brain surgery.
Even though Bieker was shocked she had never heard of neurosurgery as an option to treat epilepsy she didn't think twice about doing it. Not only were the seizures preventing her from starting a family, they were increasingly putting her life in danger.
Once, her husband came home to find her passed out on the floor with her head bloodied and food cooking on the stove.
Another time, she felt a seizure coming on when she was preparing a meal. Instead of turning off the boiling water, she put everything from her kitchen table into the fridge, silverware and all.
In what she calls the scariest incident, she was working as a server at American Girl Place in Chicago when she started having a seizure. Her co-workers brought in her into the bathroom so as not to frighten the kids.
"I woke up, and there was a man over me putting a needle in my arm," Bieker recalled. "He was a paramedic, but you don't think that. I was sitting on the floor in the bathroom, and all I could see was the tiles and him. It was like a nightmare."
The seizures eventually forced her to stop working. Her doctors took away her driver's license. She went from neurologist to neurologist, but the medications they prescribed didn't help.
Her meeting with Gerard changed everything.
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Life after brain surgery: Dyer woman's seizures stopped, allowing a family to start