In regard to Ben Carson’s memoir, Maranda Francisco was one of Carson's patients. She was a four-year-old girl when Carson met and treated her in 1985. As a surgeon at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital, Carson operated on the girl. She suffered from epilepsy linked to Rasmussen's encephalitis, an extremely rare condition that involves inflammation of the brain. Carson discusses her case, including the difficult decision to perform surgery, in chapters 14 and 15 of Gifted Hands.

Maranda’s epileptic seizures had begun before she turned two, and her parents consulted many doctors before her condition was diagnosed. She sometimes had several hundred seizures daily, and the encephalitis was life-threatening. Treatments with medication were not successful. Carson’s consultation with her parents and medical team included the factor that he had not previously performed the type of brain surgery she needed. This was a hemispherectomy, in which the damaged hemisphere of the brain is removed. Everyone was concerned that the surgery might not succeed, but she was likely to die regardless.

The difficult, ten-hour surgery was successful, and very soon after the operation, Maranda began to speak and move, which had become virtually impossible before the procedure.