Name: Surgery Saved My Life
Genre: Documentary
Released: Nov 30, 2006
Cast: Ed Cunningham, Gretchen Miller, Dr. Liau, Dr. Jaquiss, Jade Gzi

S01E01 · Extreme Spine Surgery

Nov 30, 2006

Ghanaian-born New Yorker Dr. Oheneba Boachie-Adjei is arguably the world's top surgeon of spinal deformities. We follow his most challenging surgery to date, to save the life a 15-year-old boy from Sierra Leone whose back is bent forward at almost 90 degrees. We also see him complete an eight-year-long surgical project on a 10-year-old girl from Long Island. Without Dr. Boachie, her bent back would have crushed her lungs and killed her at age 2. Now, at age 10, she's about to enter junior high, and Dr. Boachie must do one final surgery to free her from the back brace ...

S01E02 · Six-Organ Transplant

Dec 07, 2006

Gretchen Miller was an 18-year-old college student with a bright future ahead of her. Then, in one day, everything changed. She collapsed with intense stomach pain on the way to the library. A piece of her intestine had twisted. Now, 14 years later, her entire digestive system has shut down. She has not eaten a meal for over a decade, living instead on bags of fluid fed intravenously. During the past six months, Gretchen's liver went into acute failure and her weight dropped to 67 pounds; she was given just weeks to live. Only one man could even hope to save her: Dr. ...

S01E03 · Epilepsy Surgery

Dec 14, 2006

Sky Titus, a Native American teenager, has been battling life-threatening epilepsy for half his life. Medication can't control his violent seizures. Sky's mother, Leah Harper, is a traditional medicine woman who foresaw Sky's illness when he was born. Now, in a blend of traditional ritual and Western medicine, a new cure will be sought. Dr. Victor Perry, a renowned neurosurgeon from the University of California in San Francisco, will hunt for the tissue in Sky's brain that is causing the seizures. Leah will bless Dr. Perry's hands outside the operating room and ...

S01E04 · Train-Wreck Heart

Dec 21, 2006

Allison Lowery was born with a heart her doctors call a train wreck. It was on the wrong side of her body, it was backward and it had a hole in it. The main arteries leading to her heart were reversed - a deadly condition that deprives the body of oxygen-rich blood. She had three surgeries by the time she was 10, including one that nearly killed her. Not only did Allison survive, she became a track star, jumping high hurtles for her school team, outside Little Rock, Ark. Now, just two months before her 17th birthday, Allison is due for a valve replacement. It's ...

S01E05 · Awake Brain Surgery

Dec 28, 2006

Dominic Bakewell played guitar in the 1980s rock outfit Berlin. Now age 48, he's left the wild life of rock 'n' roll behind. As a husband and father of a 2-year-old son, he writes children's songs and still loves to play guitar. Three months ago, however, Dominic was struck by a series of sudden seizures. MRI scans found a tumor the size of a plum on the left frontal side of his brain - right next to the area that controls his guitar-playing hand. It's so close to other vital areas like speech that leading UCLA neurosurgeon Dr. Linda Liau proposed doing the surgery ...

S01E06 · Triple Kidney Transplant

Jan 04, 2007

Three pairs of complete strangers try to save each other's lives. Six Americans from across the country take part in a high-risk and high-stakes "triple kidney exchange" that could save - or end - the lives of three of them. Three are stuck on dialysis, and on a long waiting list for a kidney. All three have unusual cocktails of antibodies in their bloodstreams, and they will probably die before they can get off the list. But, in a unique donor-matching program at Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, they get a chance to receive a life-saving kidney from a live donor...

S01E07 · Rebuild My Legs

Jan 11, 2007