My daughter Tammy is going to be 31 years old on the 03 -10 -05 and she has suffered from seizures since she was six weeks old. At first they said they were febrile seizues and that she would grow out of them, and at five years old we thought she had. But three months after her 10th birthday she had a seizure lasting nearly 5 hours. The doctors at the local A & E did not know what to do, so off we went to the larger city hospital where eventually they got the seizure under control. They kept her in for three days put her on Epilem and said to be aware that if she had a temperature she would possibly have a seizure-- an understatement. I took her home and she went back to school. A couple of days later the school phoned me and asked me to go in to discuss Tammy, they felt that something was not right as she seemed unable to concentrate in class, this just confirmed my own thoughts, I had been very worried as Tammy had gone from being an active child to not wanting to do anything. After the meeting at school where the class teacher told me that Tammy had gone from being in the top 3 she was now in the remedial level. I called my G.P.who immediately made an urgent appointment with the pediatric Consultant, this took 3 months. On the day I was told that I was being overprotective and that it was the medication making her drowsy and that once it was in her system she would be back to her normal self.

Twenty years on and having tried every single anti- epileptic medication she is not her normal self. She never became my beautiful daughter again. It took me 18 months to convince the medical profession that she had a problem and by then it was too late. She now has anything up to 20 seizures a day and she suffers fom epilepsy-related psychosis. She has a good life when she isn't so ill. Myself and her sisters and brother do all they can to make her life good, and she has some really good carers who help me out with her care and her life. I feel that people with epilepsy especially in England are stigmatised and do not get the help they need when they need it, and by the time they do receive any help it is to late. In Tammy's case lack of oxygen to the brain means that she will always be a 12 year old girl. At the moment we are having a good period not many seizures (about 10 a day) so she is able to go out. Tammy is not going to get better so we are doing everything we can to make her life happy. I love my daughter but I wish I could have, no I wish she could be that 10 year old girl again with her life in front of her.