College Years and Epilepsy

It's finally time to get ready to go off to college. You have lots of questions about how your seizures will affect your college life. Should you tell your roommate and your new friends about the epilepsy? Should the school health service or teachers know you have seizures? How will studying late or all-night partying affect your epilepsy? There isn't one right answer for these questions. The answers will depend on how comfortable you are talking about epilepsy and how much impact the seizures have on your life.

It's a good idea to speak to your roommate about epilepsy and your need for daily medicine. Roommates are like extensions of family members and it's important that you feel comfortable taking your medicine when your roommate is around. If you don't tell your roommate about your medicine, you end up hiding it, missing doses, and maybe even stopping it on your own. Many college students stop taking their seizure medicines for various reasons without consulting their physician or nurse and then they have seizure activity or even status epilepticus (continuous seizures). If your seizures are under good control when you take your medicine, it's not necessary to tell all your friends about the epilepsy, although sharing the information with close friends may provide support and feel good. If your seizures are uncontrolled, it's better to tell the friends you spend the most time with about your epilepsy. This will help prepare them for what might happen so they will know what to do if you have a seizure.

Similarly, the school health service should know about your epilepsy, if only so they can take it into account if they have to treat you for something else. You should tell them what seizure medicines you take, your seizure type and frequency, the telephone number of your physician, guidelines for emergency care of your seizures, and the names of any medications that you may need during or after seizure activity, such as Diastat or Klonopin.

Teachers only need to know about your epilepsy if seizures occur during classroom time or if the epilepsy affects your ability to learn. Informing the teacher about learning problems related to your epilepsy may allow special considerations that could help your academic performance.

The change in lifestyle at college might affect your seizure control. Being away from home for the first time may cause anxiety and stress, which may lead to a seizure or two. Keeping late hours for studying or socializing and not getting the proper amount of sleep also may increase your seizure frequency. It is well known that sleep deprivation increases the likelihood of seizures. Some epilepsy syndromes, such as juvenile myoclonic epilepsy, are more sensitive to sleep deprivation than others.

Many social situations at college will involve drinking alcohol. Alcohol changes the blood levels of seizure medicines and can cause seizures, especially during withdrawal (6 to 48 hours after you stop drinking). Drinking one or two alcoholic beverages will not cause meaningful changes in the blood levels of your medication. But if you have difficulty limiting alcohol consumption to one or two drinks, then it might be better to avoid alcohol altogether.

Be smart and take good care of yourself—take your seizure medicine, sleep well, manage your stress, and limit your alcohol intake. If you do, your college years will be a healthy and enjoyable time!

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