Laurie Bongle

For years, Lauri Bongle, now age 40, had sought answers to her health problems — mainly hot flashes followed by short blackouts.

The symptoms were more than inconvenient, they were dangerous. Bongle totaled two cars in a year and finally quit driving because she didn't feel safe.

She consulted several doctors and got diagnoses including hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), a seizure disorder, perimenopause, cancer and mental illness. None of them was right.

"I wondered if I was just cracking up," says Bongle, of Milton, Wis., a small town south of Madison.

Extremely frustrated, she resigned herself to live with her still unidentified condition. A friend who was a nurse urged her to try Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Bongle admits she arrived at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., highly skeptical, but her attitude changed quickly. The doctors and nurses "listened to what I had to say," she says. "They were so willing to help me."

Bongle saw several specialists during a comprehensive evaluation to hone in on the cause of her health problems. Doctors found the answer on a tiny section of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan of Bongle's brain.

Diagnosis: Epilepsy

Bongle was experiencing epileptic seizures because of an abnormal brain function in the temporal lobe on the right side of her brain. Just knowing the diagnosis was a huge relief, she says.

Her struggle to identify her condition was not surprising, says Jeffrey Britton, M.D., a Mayo Clinic epilepsy specialist. The symptoms from temporal lobe epilepsy can be attributed to psychiatric problems, too.

Research conducted at Mayo Clinic has made temporal lobe epilepsy easier to diagnose and treat, says Dr. Britton. Researchers found that lesions — shrinkage of a tiny part of the temporal lobe — can be seen on a MRI. "We didn't know what it looked like on MRIs until the early 1990s," he says.

Bongle's doctors confirmed the source of the seizures with inpatient video-EEG (electroencephalography) monitoring. Her treatment options included medication to manage seizures or surgery to remove the temporal lobe. The surgery has been performed for 40 to 50 years, although infrequently because of the risk of memory loss.

Today, Mayo Clinic doctors can assess the risk of memory loss before surgery by, essentially, putting one half of the brain to sleep and testing the memory capabilities in the other half, and then repeating the test on the other side.

Bongle's test results were ideal for proceeding with surgery. She was not using the right temporal lobe — her source of seizures — for her memory. Her doctors estimated that there was an 80 percent chance of a successful surgery — meaning no more seizures.

"I did some soul searching," says Bongle. "Now I had answers. This could be a cure."

She had surgery to remove the temporal lobe two years ago. Bongle's seizures stopped. Her memory was not affected. The only lingering side effect is slightly diminished peripheral vision.

"Between God and Mayo Clinic, I have my life back," says Bongle, who administers benefits for county social services and has a 15-year old son.

"I went from not knowing what was going on with my health and getting in accidents, to being totally cured," she says.