Just diagnosed and sooo confused! how is it legal to be driving?!?

Dear Tabby, Every state's laws vary as to what is required of either the doctor or patient regarding the reporting of epilepsy to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Certainly if you were to drive and cause an accident injuring yourself, your children or others due to a seizure, you not only would be liable but you might have charges pressed against you. My soon to be 19 year old has experienced both grand mal and petit mal seizures. I choose to apply a physicians rule of thumb regarding length of time she must remain free from grand mal seizures before I allow her to drive. Following any major trauma, illness or childbirth, doctors will tell you, wait 6 weeks before driving. Likewise if she remains free from the grand mal seizures for 6 weeks, we feel fairly confident that it is safe for her to drive. However, common sense really needs to dictate how long any individual should wait or if they should resume driving at all. Every patients seizures will vary extremely in how greatly or how often they are affected. My daughter very seldom experiences the petit mal (absence seizures). She knows when the large ones are coming on. However, if she were to experience many small seizures frequently, on a daily basis I wouldn't want her driving, period. Currently, I am driving her around again because she had a grand mal last week. She is now on Topamax. It seems to be working well. No more large seizures this week. No small ones either. She also knows what triggers her seizures and avoids those conditions. You need to learn as much as you can about your seizures and what triggers them. Start by asking anyone who was with you during each episode to describe them to you and log it in a diary along with any activities in the 30 minutes before your seizure. Arm your self with information about your condition and it won't be so scary. God bless, Dianne Augustine

Hi, I'm 27 and just started having seizures in January this year. I live in TX and the law says I have to be seizure free for 6 months to drive. My advice...don't drive until you at least feel confident the seizures are under control. I didn't take it seriously after the first seizure (this is all very new to me still) and had a second grand mal seizure within 10 min of parking my car 3 weeks later. I consider myself very lucky that I did not hurt myself or someone else. Not to mention the amount of liability, fines, etc. that I was at risk for. It really stinks to not be able to drive, but I'm finding that my friends and coworkers are really supportive so far.

In the UK you cannot drive unless you are seizure free for a year. Although giving up your licence is voluntary and you have to tell the DVLA yourself, your insurance would be invalid and therefore you would be driving illegally anyway. I think it is a reasonable period of time. My husband had his first seizure about 10 mins after getting out of the car - it doesn't do to think about what might have been!