Thank you for this informative article. I have dealt with epilepsy since I was 8 years old. My parents didn't explain to me what my condition was. It wasn't until I was in college that I understood what "I had". I remember the neurologist telling me at the time that there was no guarantee the seizures wouldn't return. And he was correct. One cause that you didn't touch upon was the role that hormones take. I relatively fine until I started menopause and then, the auoras, migrane headaches, and when the conditions were right, a full blown seizure happened. Other things would trip them in combination-such as heavy travel schedule, work stress, lack of sleep, etc. Until I found a neuroendochronologist who helped put a stop to the episodes. My neurologist at the time almost laughed at the idea that this is why I was having seizures. The ironic thing is, no one is immune from seizures, they could occur at any stage in a person's life with no explaination. To this day, there is no reason for mine, and could relate to the struggles and frustrations of those in the article. I never told anyone I had epilepsy, I was too afraid of their reaction because of the stigma associated with it. Now, I freely tell people, they need to know. What bothers me the most is, am I more of a danger to someone on the road with Diabetes or a Heart condition? I don't think so, my seizures are controllable. Why are people with Epilepsy considered more of a threat than those two other groups?
- 1
- 2
A STORM IN THE BRAIN
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
Though the most overt examples of discrimination and demonization have faded with time, epilepsy still receives too little attention, either from the medical community or the public at large. Why? One reason is that advances in drug treatments have created the popular impression that epilepsy is now an essentially manageable condition. (Which, for two thirds of patients, it is. But that still leaves a third for whom it is not.) It is thought to be rarely fatal, controllable by medication. There is a terrible irony here: because most people with epilepsy are not in a constant state of seizure—they are, rather, in perpetual but quiet danger—their condition can appear less serious than it truly is. It is all too human, but all too true, that a problem, including the problem of a serious medical affliction, stays out of mind when it is out of sight.
Because so many of those who must endure it do so valiantly, and with grace and grit, it is more difficult for those not directly affected by it to grasp that epilepsy can kill. Put harshly, we need more of a cancerlike sensibility around epilepsy. We cannot usually see our friends' cancer, but we do not hesitate to invest the search for a cure for different cancers with the utmost cultural and political importance. We must now do the same with epilepsy. "We want complete freedom from seizures," says Susan Axelrod. "We want future families to be spared what so many other families, for so many years, have endured. Lives should not be defined by diseases." No, they should not—which is why all of us must focus on understanding epilepsy. And then we must defeat it.
© 2009
- 1
- 2
Discuss