Jim’s Story

I was diagnosed with epilepsy in 2018 at the age of 52. The type of seizures that I experience are focal impaired awareness seizures. I had seizures almost daily for about 10 years before my wife realized what was going on. What I was experiencing was not my idea of what epilepsy is. I thought that what was going on with me was related to stress, or anxiety. So, I kept it a secret. Keeping this to myself impacted me mentally, emotionally, and physically. My job performance progressively got worse, my relationship with my wife was negatively impacted, and I actually lost about 25 lbs! Along my journey I visited many different doctors (Medical, Psychologists, Psychiatrists). I would describe what was going on with me, and epilepsy never came up. Eventually my wife, Jill, got tuned into what was going on and encouraged me to go see a Neurologist who quickly diagnosed me with epilepsy. Within 3 months we were able to control my seizures with medication, and I have been seizure free for about 5 years now. Actually, just being diagnosed was a huge weight off of me. Epilepsy has never been an easy thing for me to talk about, but over time it has become easier. I attended my first “Walk to End Epilepsy” a few months after my diagnosis, and being a part of this community, and seeing how epilepsy impacts everyday people going about their everyday lives made me feel so much more comfortable about living with epilepsy. Moving forward I hope to be able to be an active part of the epilepsy community, and to raise awareness of how common this really is, and to help others to become more comfortable with living with epilepsy.