Our daughter was diagnosed with epilepsy in 2005 when she was 6 years old. We first started noticing the changes in her behavior when she was 4 (2003), but we didn't know exactly what it was and we didn't want to admit that there might be something wrong. At first, it almost seemed like she was just not paying attention or that she was not listening to us. But then it started to progress into noticeable occurrences several times a day. In July 2003 we spoke to our pediatrician about it, telling him that she would have episodes where she appeared to be completely detached from the world around her and that when we asked her about it, she could not remember anything before an episode or during. He told us not to be concerned - that she appeared to be healthy, she was growing at a normal rate, and he could not see any visible problems during her examination.By February 2004 it had become evident that she was not learning. Still denying that there might be a problem, my husband and I removed her from public school and began home schooling her. It didn't take long for us to notice that she was not retaining the information that we were teaching her in her lessons. In March 2004 we met with the pediatrician again and asked for help. He set up an appointment with a pediatric neurologist. From that point, it took several tests and more than a year to get a diagnosis.
The type of epilepsy that she has is petit mal epilepsy - absense seizures, generally reffered to as "stare spells". A petit mal seizure is a temporary disturbance of brain function caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain and characterized by abrupt, short-term lack of conscious activity ("absence") or other abnormal change in behavior. When you think about it, it's really scary - all of those times that I was upset because I didn't think that she was paying attention, and then I realized it was something that she wasn't able to control. I felt terrible - And I started feeling like maybe I was responsible in some way.
The truth is no cause can usually be found for typical petit mal seizures. No neurologic or other disorders are usually discovered.
It has taken several small steps to get where we are today. At times I didn't think that I would be able to deal with this. My daughter gave me the strength that I needed, because not only was she so strong herself, but I knew that she needed me to be strong. We have spent much time looking at epilepsy in a new and different way, which I will share with you. It has helped tremendously and I am happy to report that our daughter is doing wonderfully.
Our Way...
One of the things that our daughter enjoys is art (painting, drawing, writing), and she is very good at it. While I was doing some research about epilepsy on the internet, I came across an article on Art Theropy for epilepsy patients. As described on http://www.arttherapy.org/about.html, art therapy is based upon the belief that the creative process involved in artistic self-expression helps people to resolve conflicts and problems, develop interpersonal skills, manage behavior, reduce stress, increase self-esteem and self-awareness, and achieve insight. It is not intended to reduce seizures; however, by reducing stress, art therapy can indirectly lower seizure frequency. If you would like to see some of our daughters artwork, please visit http://www.much2learnart.blogspot.com/.
Our daughter use to get really upset when we would mention to someone that she has epilepsy, especially the adults and children at her school because she was afraid that they would treat her differently. I didn't want her to feel this way, so together we started looking at people throughout history that were believed to have had or known to have had epilepsy. This seemed to really help. Did you know that some of the most brilliant and intelligent people in history had epilepsy? So now, when I mention her epilepsy in conversation, it makes her happy that she can fill people in on some of the most famous people with epilepsy.
