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Father's Day for Carl Hobert is especially meaningful. After battling epilepsy and seizures of varying degrees through medication and treatment since childhood, Hobert underwent eight hours of surgery in 1999 and almost two years of recovery and rehabilitation.
Throughout the 1990s prior to his surgery at BWH, Hobert and his wife, Francene, “tried everything” to have their own children and adopted two adorable girls, Leah, who is now 9, and Olivia, now 7. But once he completed his post-surgery recovery, Carl and Francene had their own child, Juliana, who is now 3 years old.
“No one knows for sure, but we always figured it was at least partially due to all the medications I was on,” Hobert said. This year marks the fourth Father's Day for Hobert and three lovely girls.
And now Hobert, 44, is one of BWH's biggest cheerleaders, as he routinely shares his success story with other patients and their families as they consider complex neurosurgery procedures. Hobert no longer has to worry about having seizures and dropping the chalk while teaching French and Spanish at Belmont Hill School. “And I got my driver's license and a car for the very first time,” he said. “This surgery changed my life.”
Hobert was 15 months old in his Minneapolis home when diagnosed with encephalitis, a viral disease that causes swelling and inflamation of the brain. Physicians point to this as the likely cause of his epilepsy that developed later in life. During his teenage years, Hobert experienced complex partial seizures that he dismissed as “the shakes.” When he reached his 20s, he had his first grand mal, or the classic generalized seizure.
At the recommendation of his neurologist, Edward Bromfield, MD, of BWH, Hobert met with Peter M. Black, MD, PhD, chief of Neurosurgery at BWH. He agreed to an extended stay at BWH when doctors monitored him with EEGs, observed him having a seizure and pinpointed its source - scar tissue from his encephalitis in his left temporal lobe. In June 1999, Hobert underwent eight hours of surgery to have that scar tissue removed.
“The seizure-free rate after temporal lobe surgery is 60 to 80 percent,” said Bromfield. But facing such a surgery is rather daunting, especially for someone like Hobert. The surgery was performed on his language-dominant hemisphere, and Hobert is a language teacher.
“For such surgeries, it's typical to have the patient awake to test their language skills. We tested Carl in both French and English during the surgery,” Bromfield said.
And while no one is 100 percent sure that Hobert's epilepsy and medications prevented him from conceiving a child, seizures, antiepileptic drugs and brain abnormalities can affect hormone levels and perhaps fertility, said Bromfield.
Hobert speaks to children around the world about conflict resolution though what he calls “preventive diplomacy - communication, compromise, co-existence and compassion” through his own non-profit company called Axis of Hope, and runs the Boston Marathon each year to raise money and awareness for a child patient of Black's with a brain tumor.