My Life

This is my story from my teenage years... 13-17 (the most interesting ones):

My grandma got a deadly diagnosis, stage four pancreatic cancer, in 2013. I was 13 when this happened and they gave her only 6-12 months to live with chemotherapy. I started having seizures and was diagnosed with epilepsy only a few months later. Within one year, I went through so many difficult events. Her diagnosis was in November 2013. My epilepsy diagnosis was in March 2014. Shortly after I got my diagnosis, as a 13-year-old, I got a third-degree burn. This burn required going to the hospital for the blisters to pop on their own. I was there for two nights and went for a skin graft less than two weeks later. After the skin graft, I was in the hospital for another night and missed a month of eighth grade. After the surgery had healed, or so I thought, I got a sunburn where the skin graft was done. I was just a stupid kid and did not know that a person could burn through a t-shirt.

I started high school with the nickname "seizure girl," which was extremely hurtful to me. I did my best to stay under the radar. It was often difficult since I have no control over when my seizures will happen. I have no warning signs as to when they will happen and I never have had any. While some people start out with warning signs and they go away, I just never had any. During this school year, while I was 14, I had to begin therapy because I got extremely depressed with all of my life circumstances.

Less than a year later, in tenth grade, I was told I couldn't go on a school trip because of my epilepsy. As soon as my dad heard about this, they changed their mind and said that I could still go. I guess they didn't realize that if they didn't let me go, the ADA would have been on our side completely. To this day, I think they agreed to let me go because a year before this, the district went through a lawsuit because of a girl with epilepsy having a service dog. (Spoiler: The district lost that lawsuit.)

After that year, stuff was pretty uneventful, other than countless tests and electroencephalograms (EEGs). EEGs are how doctors can watch brain waves to see if they are abnormal or not. However, in 11th grade, when this paragraph takes place, I went through a lot in only a few months. On March 16th, I had an extra bone, known as the accessory navicular bone, removed from the inside of my foot. I was on crutches and it was the swimming unit in school. I loved swimming at the time so I was heartbroken. Things got even worse when I was on crutches during gym... They made me go into the pool area on crutches and in a cast that couldn't get wet. If it did, it would have had to get the entire cast replaced. I informed my dad that day so it wouldn't happen again. They suddenly had a desk outside of the glass the next time I had gym.

A few months later, over the summer vacation, I started seeing a psychiatrist, who told me I had depression and anxiety. I told her that I thought the diagnosis was wrong and I thought it was bipolar 2. She couldn't say it was bipolar because I wasn't 18 yet (though turning 18 a few years later didn't make her think it was bipolar even with my first real hypomanic episode).

In my senior year, my dad got into his first motorcycle accident causing him to be in the intensive care unit and leading to anti-seizure medications for a week. Fun fact... I was on the anti-seizure medication that he was put on for that week when I was 13 but it caused me to be extremely depressed. April of senior year was eventful. I went to Washington D.C. to talk to government people about epilepsy, came home for one night, and went to Chicago on a school trip. I was diagnosed with functional neurological disorder (FND) after seizing for hours during Hamilton on the school trip. In May, I started going to a seminar for people with FND. In June, my grandma passed away from her long battle with cancer and I graduated eight days after her death.