Personal Experience: Submitted 3/7/2005

When I was 6 years old my family was on their way home from vacation when I went into a grand mal seizure in the back seat of the car. I was rushed to the nearest hospital and admitted for a week of tests, only to be diagnosed with epilepsy. I was then put on Dilantin and Phenobarbital through most of my childhood. My next grand mal seizure I had was at age 8. One day I wasn't feeling well so my mother told me to go lay down. The next thing she knew, I was having another grand mal seizure.

Throughout my next 16 years, I was put on different medications that didn't seem to control my seizures. I had approximately 30 petit mal seizures per month. I had wonderful friends that were always there for me; however when it came to my first job in the real world, that was another story. I was in the co-op program in my senior year (1982) and worked part-time at a bank. After the occurrence a few seizures, on-to-job, I was let go.

At that time instead of the being looked at as a disability it was looked at as an illness or you could say the bank looked at it as an eyesore. In 1984 I moved to California and saw a different neurologist that thought I didn't have epilepsy at all but instead thought my seizures were being provoked by migraines. After trying different medications and still experiencing seizures, not to mention my last grad mal at age 24, the neurologist finally agreed that I had epilepsy and referred me to an experimental project being conducted at UCLA.

I went through various tests (MRI, CTscan, EEG, WADA, IQ, etc.) for approximately seven months and finally had brain surgery on November 11, 1989. I was their 99th experimental patient and due to that, need I mention, all the problems I had with my insurance companies. They claimed the surgery was "experimental and not approved by the FDA". After struggling for over a year, my bills were finally paid if not "written off" by the doctors. I now have been seizure-free since that morning of surgery, my last seizure was in pre-op. Two years after surgery I was taken off all medication.

Miracles do happen, and this is just one of God's. If you wish, you can contact me at TM2005@insightbb.com.

-Tami Milburn