BOONE SUCCESS STORY
Tracy Sasser W
hen Tracy Sasser was a young girl, around the age of 5, she had a “trick” that others would often point out: She could flutter her eyelids abnormally fast. She was often asked how she was able to flutter them so quickly, but the truth was, she didn’t know. In fact, most of the time she didn’t even know it was happening. In high school, she noticed that, in addition to blinking quickly, she would sometimes zone out or not remember what she had just said. It wasn’t until college that she had her first grand mal seizure. She assumed she had passed out for a short amount of time because of sleep deprivation or dehydration, but in reality, 40 minutes had slipped by and something much more serious was going on. This happened eight more times before the morning of her brother’s wedding, when she had a grand mal seizure that resulted in her having a large knot on her head that was “a real challenge for the makeup artist that day,” she says. It was at this point that family members became aware of her symptoms. Some members in the medical field suggested to her that it sounded like seizures and encouraged her to seek care. At the time, she was working at a smaller hospital in cardiology. She visited the hospital’s neurologist, who performed an EEG (electroencephalogram) and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging)
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BOONE HEALTH
Fall 2021
to determine the cause of her seizures. While she was working, he pulled her into a separate room where he showed her the results of her EEG. From there, he told her the shocking news that she had epilepsy. She distinctly remembers allowing herself a five-minute breakdown before having to head back to work. They started her on medication right away. The diagnosis meant she could no longer drive, but she was still on call. She relied on her family members to give her rides at random hours, and they were always there for her. Shortly after
her diagnosis, she moved to Columbia and began working at Boone Health as a cardiovascular sonographer in December of 2014. She quickly found a caring community there. She says: “Everyone is like a family. You can walk through the halls and someone will always say hi, wave, or smile. You don’t always get that at big hospitals.” After moving, she started seeing neurologist Miles Goble, MD. They performed a sleep-deprived EEG to purposefully encourage seizure activity. This showed that she was having seizure
