“At 4 months of age, our daughter Julie* was diagnosed with stage 4 hydrocephalus [excess fluid in the brain].  Over just a few days, her head grew quite large.  A CT scan of her head showed one giant ventricle and a pancake of a brain pressed against her little skull.  There was reasonable fear that our little girl would be quite damaged by the intracranial pressure.  We struggled to accept that she could be completely disabled.  Julie had a series of shunt surgeries, complicated by meningitis which required weeks of powerful intravenous antibiotics and exteriorizing the shunt in the ICU waiting for the infection to clear.  Julie then developed a rare form of epilepsy - status epilepticus - after her 7th shunt surgery at four years of age.  Her seizures do not stop on their own and require strong medicine in an ER to get them to subside. 

Early in her elementary school years, we drove across the state to get a neuropsychological evaluation in order to get as much information as possible about helping her learn and achieve.  Discovering her unique and very unusual pattern of strengths and weaknesses through the testing was extremely helpful in targeting formal special education efforts and informal home-based supports.  It is not often that a person scores in the borderline mentally retarded range on some subscales of an intelligence test while also scoring in the superior range on other subscales of the same test.  Julie indeed had a strong ability to learn overall and we felt that the neuropsychologist was the very best specialist to find and exploit those available resources.  Her special education handicapping condition was math and a group of teachers, special educators and tutors helped Julie keep up by utilizing her identified strengths.  Julie was a special education student with an Individualized Education Plan since before her first day of KG all the way through high school. 

Not only did Julie graduate from high school, but she also graduated from college – with a degree in Accounting, no less!  Later she went on to earn her MBA and today works at an accounting firm.  Julie’s parents describe their daughter as "truly a miracle all the way around" and are forever grateful for the ability to connect with a neuropsychologist who helped them create an individualized plan to support her unique needs so that she could reach her goals.  Julie did the hard work, but we would never have found the path to success without the map the neuropsychologist gave us.”

*Names and certain information has been changed to protect the privacy of the family