of those Buccaneer rides at the amusement park. "The room was constantly moving," he says. "It was like that every day of my life." At school, sometimes he had to hold on to a classmate to walk down the hall. He missed out on a lot. Field trips. Normal things kids do, like learning to ride a bike. And 30 days of school last year alone. Head and Neck Surgery at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. The craniotomy Dr. Wackym performed in April--for third win- dow syndrome--changed Joey's life. the blackboard. Glasses didn't help. By the second grade, he marked the start of a seven-year search for answers that took Joey and his parents--Gerry and Debbie Zarello--to neurologists from New Jersey to Philadelphia and back again. The first two special- ists had conflicting opinions: one said he wasn't having seizures, the other said he was--as many as seven per hour. That led the and healthy," says P. Ashley Wackym, MD, professor and chair of the newly formed Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, who performed a life-changing craniotomy on 14-year-old patient Joey Zarello. |