I've had it since I was four so if I never got it I would say my life would have turned out very different. I do remember when was very young most likely just before I got epilepsy, or it may have been just after I was obsessed with trucks, big machinery and construction. So, I would have been doing that.

Due to having epilepsy I was divorced + lost my 3 children, even if it stopped now I would still feel the same.

Yes, the adult-onset epilepsy changed me, especially after being mismanaged by my first neurological team. I was so grossly overmedicated that I was barely functional. I used to tutor trigonometry and algebra, I was a toolmaker/maintenance machinist and machine builder, now I have incredible difficulty working with simple numbers. My memory was my gift, now it's tattered and fragmented. My emotions were never a problem, now I could cry watching kids play.

The period of weaning from the massive doses of Keppra and Dilantin uncovered something very raw that I'd hidden all my life... I'm a victim of child abuse, and from finally revealing it I was diagnosed with Complex PTSD. I never even told my wife of 44 years anything about it. I thought it was behind me, but the perfect storm of my epilepsy diagnosis, overmedication, burying mine and my wife's parents, a series of court cases over my parents' estate, and the unexpected shock of retirement, all happening in a short amount of time, was the straw that broke the camel's back. I had a "nervous breakdown", with no way to get the worms back in the can.

I had plans for retirement, mostly shot down now because of the cost of managing all of this. I was a respectable and competent guitarist/bassist, now executing my chops is unattainable. Working with tools, climbing ladders, swimming, driving, watching the grandkids... there is a certain amount of uneasiness from everyone around me when I'm involved in activities that were once part of my life, and that I seriously didn't want to give up. The worse part of it is the feeling of being a burden. I am a fragment of my former self, now I have to be "watched". It was devastating to be suddenly cleaved from my sharp clear-mindedness and independence and thrown into a drug-fog, robbed of my dreams.

How would I have described myself? A musician on fire, a retiree with an agenda, a Mr. Fixit, a teacher, a marathon bicyclist, a recreational driver with no destination... I drew the short straw with this condition, right when I was finally cut free from a career, a boss, and a schedule. I accept it, it's not a disease, it's a condition, just like my Dupuytren's Contracture. But I do resent being kicked back down the stairs just when I finally worked my way to the top. Such is life, it could be much worse.

Well before my condition I wanted to become a designer home interior. I love going to the lake. I like to go and do things out in the Heat. I can't do that anymore there was a time I had bought all these crafts to do and then when I ended up with a covid I had lost total interest with that everything else was before I ended up the covid I stay to myself more and I'm just being me and I've been trying to work on this one project I don't know 3 years and I hope that I could get it done this year because it's something I'm making for my daughter.

Nothing different other than I would be able to drive and not have to rely on someone else and have the opportunity to attract friends.