The artist has begun painting again after a transformative operation at Cedars-Sinai. (photo courtesy of Syril Strickler)

Artist Syril Strickler was 47 when she had her first epileptic seizure, waking up in the hospital after neighbors found her unconscious in the street. For 10 years, seizures every few weeks brought her life to a standstill, until Cedars-Sinai physicians performed a surgery that gave Strickler her life back.

Strickler launched her own art studio shortly after graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the late 1980s. She painted murals at more than 100 Chicago restaurants, hotels, nightclubs and bars, and relocated to Southern California shortly before her seizures began in 2007.

“Every month or so, I would have another seizure and wake up in the hospital about four days later,” Strickler said. “Little by little, the business I had built up came to a halt. After a seizure caused a major car crash where, thankfully, no one was killed, I had to give up driving. My life was absolutely leveled.”

Dr. Jeffrey M. Chung, director of the Epilepsy Program at Cedars-Sinai, met Strickler in 2019 when she was referred by a former Cedars-Sinai resident.

“Syril had been prescribed many different medications and they were not controlling her seizures, which were frequent and severe,” Chung said. “If a patient’s seizures aren’t controlled by the first two medications they try, there is less than a 5% chance that additional medications will help. It was time to look into other treatment options.”

To locate the exact point in Strickler’s brain where her seizures were originating, the epilepsy team monitored her seizure activity using EEG electrodes attached to her scalp. When that didn’t yield enough information, Dr. Adam N. Mamelak, director of the Functional Neurosurgery Program at Cedars-Sinai, implanted electrodes at various locations in Strickler’s brain to make more precise recordings possible.

Because Strickler’s seizures were coming from two points, Mamelak suggested an alternative treatment called neuromodulation.

Mamelak said that advanced imaging and robotic surgery have significantly reduced the risks from the procedures, and that patients have more treatment options than ever before. Chung noted that long-term neuromodulation with the device used to treat Strickler results in at least a 50% reduction in seizures for more than 70% of patients. Strickler has been seizure-free for more than a year.