It’s a GREAT feeling, when someone wants to talk and understand Epilepsy, it excites me and get a little shocked.

For those who don’t know much about Epilepsy, it’s easy starting out with the basics, then figuring out which direction to go after that. Questions the person(s) have makes it easier to decide which direction I can go , when explaining it about it.

I have always told my boss/director that I have Epilepsy so that they are not blindsided if something happens. My Epilepsy came out in the open & the preschool where I teach. We had a little one who had febrile seizures & one day the director announced that I had Epilepsy & could I tell the staff how to handle a seizure. I was pleasantly surprised at how kind & encouraging the staff was. I knew they were wonderful ladies but their loving & accepting attitude touched my heart.

I always feel better whenever I can enlighten anyone to what its like to have epilepsy. If those of us who suffer from it don't enlighten others who will. Isn't that the problem, no one talks about it openly. We don't like the stigma associated with Epilepsy so I have always felt it was our responsibility to help educate and show others our condition is no worse than any other illness and definitely nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about.
Leonard

My first seizure in 2018 was confused for a mini stroke. I had another the next week and was rushed to the hospital. The doctor came in after an hour and a half and told me I didn’t have a stroke or having strokes, I was having seizures. I went for an EEG at a neurologist in 2019 and had a seizure during. I was diagnosed immediately and put on meds but the seizures didn’t stop. I started having 3 or 4 a week lasting 3 to 4 minutes. Finally I was put on different meds that keep me from having as many but I my neurologist said I will never be seizure free. I am one of the lucky ones who get an almost immediate diagnosis. I’m sorry it took so long for others. But this post is an amazing testament to being more open and accepting what others may say. Good or bad. We have the choice to walk away or educate.

Honestly, I signed quite awhile ago. I cannot even recall when. But I was reluctant to use it because 1) my VA Neurologists were not in agreement with the local University Medical Center Sleep Neurologist who suspected and treated me for Nocturnal Epilepsy so I was not hundred percent certain. 2) I am also an author and did not want public information out on my personal self. I have had to process what it means to me, my life, my family and my medical records before I could be open about it. First, for all the decades I thought I had something else due to bone and nerve injuries. Second, I had head injuries that none of my doctors ever considered could mean anything. Third, none of my doctors cared that I had a Frontal Lobe Atrophy MRI image. Fourth, the fighting with doctors for decades after I was injured in the Army. The Army and VA do everything to deny everything for us Veterans. That is the true reason Veterans commit suicide all the time. The VA makes it so hard to get help that years, sometimes decades, can go by and you just want to die. All of the medications they gave me for all of their diagnoses that turned out to be wrong, caused me seizures at night. I can list off medications that they gave me for pain that caused more seizures than I started out with in 1990 when I also thought I was having muscle spasms in my sleep. But not listening to their patients, people like me get to the end of the rope and jump. When they finally legally had to ask, "Do you have suicidal ideations." I said, "Yes." Then they had to ask, "What would you to if you wanted to act?" I said, "Take my medications. They are killing me." Over a decade later, those medications were posted on a poster which said that they caused Suicidal Ideation. That was in 2017. I really had to let go of not being treated for my actual symptoms and opening up with others who are most likely more aware than my medical doctors have been over decades. I had to accept that in myself.