When I went into a job environment, for a long time I didn’t tell anyone. I was concerned about them treating me differently, I was concerned about the stigma attached to it. I was actually a little bit worried that they may discriminate against me. There were actually times where I had serious seizures and I hadn’t told them so I felt a bit guilty about that, so after that happened I did tell them. Over time I was able to manage my seizures, there were a number of occasions where I had seizures, and I came into work anyway. I was able, generally to keep my work going. It did have an effect on my life outside of work because I was generally tired all the time. But I was able to manage having a job and still having seizures.
I’m a chartered librarian, an education specialist librarian. And I wrote books at home, which I could do on aspects of librarianship and music, because I’m very keen on music, I play the flute. So I could do that in my own time.
I trained for three and half years, I did home study courses, I went to college. I did a postgraduate teaching course as well. And I came out, and I qualified, and I was teaching for over 15 years. And at the end of the day, it shows and proves that anybody who has got epilepsy, if you really set your mind on it, you can do it.
