SEIZURES AND YOUR PARTNER PART I

This is not relationship advice from a dry textbook, but from an ordinary woman resistant to seizure medications. I daily live the "epilepsy life". Married 14 years in August 2000, uncontrolled seizures have peppered our entire married life but we are still together. My husband married a woman named Paulette but got a spattering of side effects complicating the already challenging aspect of living with somebody with a chronic health condition. Hell and torment from uncontrolled seizures has affected us both. I hope that some of the hints I have learned help you and your partner focus only on your special relationship.

The implications of having seizures can be highly negative and your partner can be "diagnosed" if he or she is greatly impacted by your seizure disorder needlessly. Your spouse will inevitably feel bad when you have a seizure, especially after a long reprieve of healthiness. Make certain you are not unknowingly tainting your relationship with excess baggage seizures can often bring. "Play up" independence from the minute you share the same name or home.

Abolish the helpless role immediately. Assigning chore delegation when you feel horrible from seizures is tough, but try to do all you can! Diagnosis does not escape your responsibilities. Shortchanging yourself from knowing what independence is denies your significant other from knowing a capable person. "Use the tools" available to you. Independence can come in the shape of a seizure assistance dog, a wheelchair, or caregiver. Use what works for you! The controversial method of using a wheelchair when influxes of status seizures bombard you isn't the first choice but it can be a solution. (A seizure alert dog isn't applicable to my case because I can have 100 simple partial variety in a day. Few drugs exist to treat this type of seizure.) When using a wheelchair for status seizures, people are shocked when I tell them it is because of epilepsy. Because it is an invisible disorder, it is made visible and people tend to care! Being President of The Epilepsy Connection, I come equipped with ways they can support epilepsy research and epilepsy resources. I do not use a wheelchair for public awareness purposes-but to survive, and on rare occasions. Hopefully my seizure control will improve so I can get abolish the need of a wheelchair altogether! Don't view your world as though trapped in a glass bubble. What matters most to your loved one shouldn't become invisible to you. When you show you care about your spouse's needs, you create a supportive relationship. That kind of support will act like a love reserve if your health is failing and you need more than a friend.

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