Abby Dawson was 2 years old when she started seeing monsters.

She tried her best to escape them, hiding under her bed or behind the couch. But they just wouldn't go away and nearly scared her to death, said her mother, Kelly.

The monsters that were haunting her daughter were a side effect of Rasmussen's encephalitis, a rare, potentially fatal form of epilepsy.

Thanks to the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program at the Medical College of Georgia, Abby is alive.

On Saturday, Abby and more than 100 other epilepsy patients reunited with the doctors and nurses of the program to thank them for giving them hope and granting them a new life.

In its 25th year, the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program has cured or significantly reduced the seizures of more than 1,000 patients, nearly 60 percent of them children, according to the program.

"We felt so lucky and so blessed to have this place an hour down the road," Mrs. Dawson said.

After Abby was diagnosed with Rasmussen's in December 2004, she was transferred to MCG immediately to see Dr. Yong Park. Dr. Park put Abby on the fast track for brain surgery and within a few weeks, she was being wheeled off for the procedure that would disconnect the right side of her brain - the source of the seizures - from the left side.

"It's the scariest thing to hand off your child to a surgeon who's going to open up their brain," Mrs. Dawson said. "But it's literally within hours that we started seeing her do little subtle things that she couldn't do before."

Surgery isn't the answer for all epilepsy patients, said Dr. Ki Lee, the program's director. Each case is different, and some seizures are better reduced through medication or special diets. But for patients such as Abby, whose seizures were severe and concentrated on one side of the brain, an operation is the only way out, he said.

"The surgery is for a very selective population, and done only when we feel we can offer a more than 50 percent reduction in seizures," Dr. Lee said.

Three weeks after surgery, Abby was walking again. Today, she's seizure-free and down to only a few sessions of therapy a week.

"Just to watch her be able to laugh and run around again is phenomenal," Mrs. Dawson said.

The second Abby spotted Dr. Park at the reunion, her face lit up and she blew him a kiss.

Four years old now, Abby doesn't quite understand all she's been through. She barely remembers the seizures, the hours of appointments, or all of the uncertainty that once surrounded her condition.

But ask Abby how Dr. Park helped her, and without thinking she's able sum it up quickly.

"He fixed my 'bwain,'" she said.

Reach Lindsay Wilkes-Edrington at (706) 823-3332 or t.lindsay.wilkesedri@morris.com.