Did you know that epilepsy is the 3rd most common neurological disorder (behind headaches and strokes) and affects around 2.5 million Americans? It’s been estimated that 10% of the American population will experience a seizure in their lifetime. Every year there are nearly 181,000 newly diagnosed epilepsy causes in the United States, and over 45,000 of these are children under the age of 15!
So, what exactly is epilepsy? WebMD defines epilepsy as “a chronic (long-lasting) medical condition marked by recurrent epileptic seizures. An epileptic seizure is an event of altered brain function caused by abnormal or excessive electrical discharges from brain cells. Epilepsy is one of the most common neurologic disorders, affecting up to 1% of the U.S. population.”
Mayo Clinic says that seizures are “a sudden, uncontrolled electrical disturbance in the brain. It can cause changes in your behavior, movements or feelings, and in levels of consciousness. If you have two or more seizures or a tendency to have recurrent seizures, you have epilepsy.”
In order to be diagnosed with epilepsy, you have to have more than 1 seizure. Someone who has a single seizure will not be diagnosed with epilepsy until they have a second seizure. If you would like to find out more about epilepsy and seizures, please visit the WebMD and Mayo Clinic websites by clicking their respective links.
Unfortunately, epilepsy is part of our lives now. They believe James had a seizure while in the NICU. He was diagnosed with infantile spasms (IS) in February. Infantile spasms, which is also called West Syndrome, is a seizure disorder in children. We’ve tried numerous treatments and drugs and haven’t found anything that works yet, but we’re not giving up!
