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Living Alone with Epilepsy
Sat, 05/07/2016 - 01:33I have lived in Portland, Oregon my entire life. I lived outside of my parent's home with roommates for college, but have since moved back in after graduation from University of Portland. I am 23 years old and am moving to ND for a nursing job at the end of the month. I wanted to stay in Portland, but the epilepsy made finding a job and getting licensed difficult. I am excited to live on my own and have been seizure free for 9 months, which is the longest in my life since diagnoses when I was 11. I feel like now is the time to try being more independent, but I am worried. I feel like so much of my independence relies on my seizures not returning. I am worried that if I have one absence seizure that I will be put on leave from my job and from driving. My seizures are often unnoticed by others, so the burden would fall on me to self-report and ruin my own chance of independence. The stress I am putting on myself to not have seizures cannot be good for my seizure control. Any advice about living alone and away from family for the first time with epilepsy?
So you want to move to ND
Submitted by just_joe on Sat, 2016-05-07 - 11:52
So you want to move to ND because you mght have a nursing job at the end of the month. Cool. I had my independence and was outside the house when I was a senior in high school. I loved living by myself. fixing my own food and yes going to college while working a full time job. I didn't borrow money to do it and the courses in college were paid for before I stepped in the classroom. Partents didn'tneed to fork over a penny and there were no loans back then. I was seizure free for about the length of time you were. Most of the seizures I had would land in the absence seisure scale since they were focal seizures. They could also land in the simple partial area. I had 1 grand mal at the nice age is 13-14 haven't had another one since I was that age. However I did have convulsive seizures that started as focal seizures. They would geberalize. Back then there were no types and the technology was a lot different. Did I worry? NO Would I move if a job came up I knew I could do? YES Did I get stressed because I might have a seizure away from home and parents? NO The reason for these answers is because I accepted the fact that I might have a seizure. So what if I do I do. If I don't I don't. Things were different back in the 60's and 70's. Understand that many things have changed with the technology there has been moving on. In the 60's there were many people with epilepsy being put away in homes. In the 70's there were still some states that wouldn't let people with epilepsy get a marriage license. You have this forum to ask questions when back then libraries were use ti research and there were no forums like this. Stress can be controlled if you just look at things using common sense. Would you be as stressed if rather the epilepsy you had A-fib? That too is conttrolled by medications designed to keep the heart rate at a steady rate. You see I have that too which actually morphed from an irregular heart beat. It is how one accepts their issue and deals with it that helps them with their independence.