GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WZZM) – A 5-year-old Fort Wayne boy is healing after a rare diagnosis left him with half a brain.
Beckett Murray was diagnosed with Rasmussen’s encephalitis, a chronic neurological disease, after he began having seizures, the first of which was in December. A doctor initially believed it was epilepsy, but as the seizures persisted, the boy’s family kept looking for answers.
After visiting several hospitals, Louisville-based pediatric neurologist Dr. Marie Clements diagnosed Murray with Rasmussen’s encephalitis, which can only be treated with a hemispherectomy, a surgery that either disconnects or removes half of the brain. Murray received the surgery in Philadelphia and was then transported to Grand Rapids to relearn almost everything he knew about life…