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.