Driving Controversies and Seizures

I will begin this by stating I am an intractable adult dependent on disabled ride services for my transportation needs. I know how to drive but refuse to because of the realities surrounding my seizure types: status simple partials and complex partials.

It has been over ten years since I've driven. An accident propelled me into a chain link fence of a schoolyard. The car was encased in chain link still allowing me to get out. (My driver's license was reinstated 2 weeks before after willingly not driving for seven years!) Things were fine as far as I could tell and I was "in control". My attempt to pull over to the side of the road was unsuccessful. The accident was shocking because I didn't witness it. I was too busy having a complex partial seizure.

Feeling demoralized, gazing through a maze of wire through the windshield, I looked in horror at our new car. It looked as though a dinosaur clawed it! I was extremely lucky I didn't kill an innocent child because it wasn't recess. Police cars lined the street along with fire engines and gawking passers by. A nameless, faceless stranger drove our car home and waited until my brother Michael arrived for needed moral support. A vehicle to me is a weapon to others and myself. Medical advances must be discovered to control status simple partial seizure activity. Until then, my health is too unstable to gamble with it.

Disclosing seizure activity does mean losing your life. Independence will still be yours provided you use all the transportation resources available to you. Seizure disclosure is your investment in your health because lies to your neurologist sacrifice your health forcing you into a mediocre existence. The biggest travesty is that you are inflicting this life on yourself!

Falsifying your health status to your doctor makes the reality possible for you to unknowingly, and very suddenly, end your life or someone else's! Consider those consequences. If you live through the accident, but injure someone else, nightmares are yours forever.

According to the British Medical Journal, 1/6th of epilepsy patients conceal medical problems. (I do not know how these statistics were arrived at.) With 2.5 million with epilepsy in the USA, they claim full or partial control of seizures were arrived at in 85% of cases. (I would like to define what "control" is! I would like to hope it does not mean passing a neurologist's cognitive check of pointing your finger to your nose or walking in a straight line!) The control spoken of may not have encompassed quality of life.

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