Epilepsy on Our Terms

Nearly three million people in the United States live with epilepsy every day and another 180,000 Americans develop epilepsy every year. Around the world, more than 60 million people have epilepsy. Epilepsy impacts everyone in different ways, as well as their families, friends and professional caregivers. This enlightening book presents the firsthand personal accounts of children with seizure disorders and their parents. In their own words, these children and parents vividly describe the experiences of handling the crisis of the initial seizure, adjusting to the diagnosis of epilepsy, coping with seizures, managing medications and side effects, and dealing with health care providers, teachers, schoolmates, siblings, and friends. Their stories reveal the terror, uncertainty, and frustration felt by children an dparents after an initial seizure or a diagnosis of epilepsy and document the ongoing trials, tribulations, and triumphs of coping with seizures, medication schedules and side effects, health care providers and hospitals, schoolmates, siblings, relatives and friends. These accounts provide realistic insights into the myriad issues encountered in living with childhood epilepsy. The book also includes a straightforward medical discussion of childhood seizures, written in layperson's terms; a glossary of medical terms; and a guide for schoolteachers and parents.