Chicago Tribune reporter
>>For 20 years, LaVerne Petersen was afraid to laugh, worried that even the glimmer of a smile could send her into a fit of agonizing pain.
Petersen kept her face as still as possible to avoid flare-ups of a rare facial nerve disorder that could be triggered by something as innocuous as touching a makeup brush to her cheek, sipping from a glass or smiling at a joke.
Desperate for anything to stop the attacks of trigeminal neuralgia, Petersen, 86, became the first patient at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights to undergo the Cyberknife procedure to treat her disease. Doctors used new robotic technology ordinarily used on cancerous tumors to shoot high doses of radiation into the damaged nerve in her brain.
Monday, July 28, 2008
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