By Jane Jackson

The blood came, gushing out. I had fallen and began to seize and no one knew why. When I resumed consciousness, my mother was crying. And my father had tears in his eyes and was swaddling my head in a towel. I tried to get up and move about but was instructed by mother to not move a muscle; she said the ambulance was on its way. It was then I touched my head and saw my golden locks matted with blood. I screamed and cried as chills trailed down my little fleshy arms and legs still wet from a long day of boating and swimming. I was terrified because I had never seen so much blood. I was four and I had just had my first seizure.

The sirens blared loudly, hurting my ears as the ambulance sped down University Avenue towards the hospital. Immediately, I was surrounded by a swell of people in white coats waiting for my arrival. I slipped away again into another grand-mal seizure and when I came to I found myself strapped down to a bed to keep me still so they could stitch my head. That was the first day of the rest of my life.

Diagnosis of the cause of my seizures would take four more years and I would have thousands of more seizures before the best doctors in their field would sit me down and tell me I had idiopathic epilepsy. We could go on trying to keep it under control through medication. However, up to this point that had not been very successful as I was eight and already had seizures under water, and had flat lined and was brought back amongst the living twice. My hopes had now been broken of ever finding a “cure” for epilepsy. I knew in no uncertain terms I would have to learn to overcome it and that the only thing to do was rely on my faith to get me through. My mother had always said that God gives everything we need, and therefore I concluded there must be a purpose to this journey.

I found that purpose to this journey recently as I went through being firing, because I had a petit mal seizure lasting no more than a few seconds on shift at my first job out of college where I graduated from business school with a 3.56 G.P.A.

Of course, they do not tell you it is discrimination when it is happening -- as nothing in life is that clear. They told me I was the lowest person on the totem pole and that the resort that I worked for was going to be going through their annual shut down for cleaning and maintenance. While it was true that I was a new hire I also knew I was not the most recent hire. While I was there, I was asked if I thought my seizures were controlled. On a daily basis, I was told that epileptics were slow or different. Nevertheless, I no longer cared. Why would I want to work for someone who considered epileptics “special” as if we were a group of freaks. I was angry and was now on a mission to expose the resort near Baraboo, Wisconsin for their illegal behavior.

My solution: I would go online and look up the case law concerning The American with Disabilities Act and epileptics. What I found was depressing news. Ten cases that have gone to the Supreme Court out of forty-two concerning epileptics have won. This was absurd and made my blood boil. It was beginning to look as if it were true - they were going to get away with it and the irony was the man who wrote the ADA act, the honorable Tony Coelho, also has epilepsy. I was beginning to see that the courts were not going to be the way I would be redeemed.

Then it hit me as I was shooting darts on a league event. I had attended tournaments for other benefits and in the small community that I live in there was always something going on. So why not re-create myself though arranging a dart tournament to benefit the Epilepsy Foundation? I could get sponsors and donations as well as items to raffle off and be used as door prizes. The owner of the largest dart shooting bar in our area is a friend of mine. “I can do this,” I told my husband and dart partner. I would think big and then others would treat it as such. So I started writing letters and making phone calls. I would try to get everything donated. We needed posters, raffle items, money and larger items for auction. I would have to work quickly because the State Dart Championship was a week away. I called our local Miller Distributor to see if they would make the posters for me. They agreed to a run off one hundred.

I have always promised myself that I would not let my epilepsy dictate how I chose to live my life. It was in charge of me when I was a child, and I would not let it run my life now. This was something I was driven to do. I would make it as big as my imagination would take me.

I wrote letters, filled out forms, and started knocking on doors. Phone calls were made to Wisconsin-based businesses. I needed some large ticket items to attract dart players as well as others for the silent auction. I would market the auction towards dart players. On Friday I received my autographed NFL football for the day of the event. Now it was time to write the papers and call the radio station.

Sixteen dart shooters showed up on a sunny afternoon in May. Enough items and services were donated to support both two raffles and a silent auction. Through the raffles and corporate donations we raised $1400 at the event. This may not sound like a windfall, but we were able to send two kids to camp this summer. Hopefully there they will discover the power they have within themselves.

The Epilepsy Foundation has asked me if I thought this could become an annual event. I told them, “that depends on area interest, but if I were to do it again I would think bigger.”

Jane Jackson is a resident of Reedsburg, Wisconsin. The event that she planned was for the Epilepsy Foundation Chapter in South Central Wisconsin.