Two Friends Reunited Through Foundation Website

By Sylvia Blair
between us Staff
Posted: April 13, 2004

Fifty-one-year-old Joanne Gonzales of Burbank, Calif., and 50-year-old Nancy Black of Glendale, Calif., met at a horse stable when they were teenagers. For years, they shared a mutual love of horseback riding. But they didn't know then what hurdles life would one day place before them.

In the early years, their friendship bloomed, and like many teens, they were always together. When Nancy got married at 21, Joanne was her bridesmaid. Joanne even followed her best friend to the airport to say farewell as Nancy left on her honeymoon. A few years later, Joanne got married, too.

But as often happens, family and job priorities took over, and the two women eventually lost touch with one another.

Fast Forward, Summer 2003

One day Nancy, who had since developed epilepsy, was searching for others to talk with in the eCommunities forum on the Epilepsy Foundation website. She came across a person named Joanne, living in California. A fleeting thought crossed Nancy's mind: "Could this possibly be my friend Joanne and could she have epilepsy, too?"

This unusual fleeting thought turned out to be a real coincidence. The online Joanne was the very same Joanne whom Nancy remembered so fondly. And, what's more, the two women were living only four miles apart.

Feelings of joy, surprise and excitement overwhelmed them both.

As soon as they could get together, they started catching up. Husbands, jobs and children were a main topic of conversation, but so was the condition they share. What most amazed them was that in separate lives they had both developed the same condition, and later had found one another as a source of comfort and support.

Joanne's Battle With Epilepsy

When Joanne was 20, she had her first convulsion in the bathtub at home. Her mother heard it, was frightened and didn't know what to do. Joanne ended up in the hospital for a week, had a CT scan and an EEG. She was diagnosed with epilepsy. She started taking one antiepileptic medication, which seemed to work beautifully for 30 years.

Then menopause hit.

"I didn't know what was happening," Joanne said. "I felt like my body was falling apart. I was having back surgeries, problems with my legs. I was being spacey, having arm curls, dropping to the ground—all scattered seizure activity."

So Joanne's neurologist put her on more than one medication. This still didn't help; her seizures continued, and so did her confusion.

"I fell down a flight of stairs, got up, stood outside the building, found my truck and tried to use my house keys to get inside it," Joanne said.

Fortunately, another trip to the doctor helped. "Now I'm on a new combination of medicine that allows me to achieve a comfortable level of seizure control," Joanne said.

Despite having epilepsy for so many years, Joanne has worked steadily. She has been a telephone installer, a legal clerk and a telephone circuit repair person. Today she is a homemaker with two adopted sons, aged 17 and 18.

Nancy's Battle with Epilepsy

Nancy was 25 and pregnant with her second child when she had a convulsion in her sleep. She stopped having seizures after starting to take medication.

After a few years without seizures, she reasoned that she didn't need medicine anymore. But the seizures in her sleep came back again. Eventually she started having complex partial seizures, so she started taking medication again.

Then, like her best friend's experience, menopause hit.

"It threw me into a tailspin," recalled Nancy. "I got sicker. During the period after a seizure, I would become nauseous, I couldn't sleep and I would rapidly lose weight."

In 1998, Nancy became a candidate for the vagus nerve stimulator (VNS). Although she had good results at the beginning, her seizures did return, albeit not quite as often. In 2000, she got a second VNS.

"I only get auras now," Nancy said, adding that she also takes medicine to control her seizures.

Today, Nancy is comptroller in a business she owns with her husband. Their business handles freight forwarding and freight brokerage, and the couple owns two large warehouses.

They work with large, worldwide commodity brokers who buy raw products like cashews and other nuts, from other countries to store in the warehouses for later processing and sale to businesses in the United States.

She has two daughters ages 24 and 25.

Enjoying Life Together

Since Joanne and Nancy live near each other, they now enjoy regular walks, lunches and shopping. They plan to volunteer for their local Epilepsy Foundation, as Nancy regularly does charitable work through her business and Joanne has some volunteer time to give.

"I feel so blessed. This experience is like having a new friend and an old friend, both at the same time," Joanne said.

"If it were not for epilepsy and the Epilepsy Foundation website, I would never have caught up with Nancy," Joanne said, adding that they also understand each other's problems with epilepsy in a special way.

"Yes, that's right," Nancy jumped in, finishing Joanne's sentences as best friends often do. "We talk to each other two times a week, at least. And we owe it all to the Epilepsy Foundation."