Now, a new procedure has given hope to many epilepsy patients, including a local girl.

Antonia Berwick, 5, looks like any other kindergartner as she bounds off the school bus in front of her Cranberry Township home.

Going to school was not something her parents thought she’d ever do.

That's because Antonia has suffered from epilepsy since she was about 1 year old.

Her mother, Joanne Berwick, first noticed something wrong when her daughter was about 10 months old.

Joanne Berwick said, "She started having quick nods. It almost looked like she was falling asleep while she was standing."

At first the seizures were subtle, but they gradually grew more severe.

"She would curl into a ball, and every muscle would constrict. She would crawl into a ball and just spasm. They were really scary," Berwick said.

By the time Antonia was 2, the once-chatty toddler couldn't even walk.

Her mother Joanne Berwick said, "She really had no quality of life. Some days she didn't even know who I was. She would look at me in a total daze, no idea where she was or what was going on."

Joanne Berwick knew something wasn't right, but it took almost a year and six neurologists before Antonia was finally diagnosed with epilepsy.

"I couldn't get anybody to believe me something was wrong until I videotaped them (seizures)," Joanne Berwick said.

Antonia went through extensive testing, and everything was normal except her electroencephalograph .

Berwick said, "I had a couple doctors tell me to come to terms with the fact she's just going to be a vegetable. She was heavily medicated. The only way we could stop her seizures was to medicate her so much she had no clue to her surroundings. I didn't want that kind of life for her, and I finally had one doctor say to me I can't help her."

But the Berwicks did finally find help from Dr. Debbie Holder at the Epilepsy Center at Children's Hospital.

Children are monitored around the clock at the center's lab in an effort to capture their brain waves while having a seizure.

It often times takes days for doctors to get enough information to determine a treatment, but in Antonia's case it didn't even take 24 hours.

Holder said the girl had one of the most severe cases of epilepsy she had seen.

"She was having hundreds seizures and pretty much lost all of her development. She pretty much seized, pretty much all of the day,"Holder explained.

Holder said the seizures are like an electrical storm in the brain.

When your brain is trying to form pathways to learn new skills, it is constantly getting disrupted by the ongoing seizure activity and preventing the brain from developing.

Antonia had been on a lot of different medications, and none seemed to work.

Holder put her on a ketogenic diet, which oftentimes stop seizures.

Berwick said the special diet helped cut down on the number of seizures Antonia was having, but it wasn't enough to give Antonia's brain a rest and allow her to regain the development she had lost.

That's when Holder decided to try a relatively new approach.

She implanted a vegas nerve stimulator in the young girl's chest wall.

It works like a pacemaker, but instead of her heart, it works on her brain.

Electrodes are put around the vegas nerve in the neck.

The vegas nerve sends information to the brain.

Holder said, "By stimulating the nerve off and on all day, you can actually change the way the brain works and decrease seizures. You can decrease the number of seizures, the frequency of seizures in some patients."

The Berwicks saw immediate results.

After never going a day without a seizure, the Berwicks started noticing within the first month after the procedure Antonia was going days without seizing.

Antionia has now been seizure-free for two years, and she is off medications and regaining much of the development she had lost.

Holder said, "If we hadn't stopped her seizures, she wouldn't have been able to develop. Her development had completely stopped, so now that her seizures are controlled she can gain her normal developmental milestones."

Holder said she recently saw Antonia and the young girl had gained two years of development in nine months, something Holder called "pretty amazing."

Antonia's mother said, "Physically , she's back to 5. She's able to do everything a 5-year-old can do. Speech-wise, she still needs a lot of work. She's back at around 2 and a half with her speech. Comprehension is still like at 3 years, but she's gaining it very rapidly."

Joanne Berwick said the vegas nerve stimulator is like a miracle for her daughter.

"It's the best present I could have gotten as a mother. I got my daughter back ," Joanne Berwick said.

Children's Hospital Epilepsy Center For more on the ketogenic diet ketogenic diet