Stories behind Milo&Me: Emily

Hi, my name is Emily! I’m 17 years old, and I live with Epilepsy. I began my epilepsy journey at a young age. When I was five, I was at Disney with my family and slept through the entire week. My mom was worried about how much I was sleeping, so we left immediately to talk to a doctor. My mom set up an appointment, and the doctor ordered an EEG, which showed I had 100s of absence seizures a day. I went to a neurologist and had a prolonged absence seizure during the exam. It is easy to say that I was quickly diagnosed with Epilepsy after that. That day, I was diagnosed with absence seizures, which I have grown out of. Then, in 2nd grade, I had a seizure that almost took my life; that night, I was diagnosed with focal seizures. Then, throughout middle school, I had seizures off and on. I was pretty healthy until my whole world blew up on me last summer. I had three big seizures that summer, which resulted in me pausing my sport and not being able to begin driving. My family and I decided in February that it was best for me to go to the Mayo Clinic to see if brain surgery was an option.

After many tests, the doctors said that they could not perform brain surgery, which was mentally a bummer. It felt like I went through all that testing for nothing, but I’m trying to move on and accept my situation. Today, I live with tonic-clonic, focal, and possible flashing light seizures. I hope to write about my daily experiences with seizures and how they affect my life. I’m also planning on documenting my driving journey here. Not just my driving journey but the hard mental aspects that come with it. I also hope to talk about my competitive gymnastics journey while having Epilepsy.

There are so many things I hope to cover in my portion of the blog, and I can’t wait to start next week officially.

-Emily (: