My niece, Samantha:

(Samantha is my brother, Drake's, daughter)
This is a picture of Samantha's staples after her brain surgery on June 29, 2010. Samantha's story: at age eight Samantha suffered a stroke just prior to Thanksgiving of that year. She remained in the hospital until Christmas Eve. She had another major stroke at age 11. Since that time she has had a few minor strokes but nothing that hospitalized her for long periods of time. Over the years she has lost the use of her right hand for writing, for holding a plate, those types of things. Back in Feb or March Samantha had another stroke which put her in the hospital for a week. The doctors have never really known why she tends to stroke but this last time the neurosurgeon did give her a diagnoses of MoyaMoya syndrome (you can google this and read about it). The only way to fix her problem was to have brain surgery and the doctors in SLC would not touch it, too complicated but the outlook for Samantha was not good if she did not have surgery. She would continue to stroke and would continue to loose function and one day, she would die from a stroke. They found a surgeon in CA at Stanford University who was willing to review Samantha's case and he agreed to perform the surgery. This is a life saving surgery but it was not without very high risks. Samantha was in surgery from 8 am until 5:30 pm. The doctors were able to untangle the mass of veins in her head, cut some away, and re-route others. While in surgery the surgeon found 8 blood clots waiting to do their damage - those 8 clots were removed. A month out of surgery Samantha is doing great, she has a new lease on life.