When I found out I was diagnosed with epilepsy, I didn’t know how to feel. Was I supposed to just forget about it? Who cares? Just give up on life? I really just didn’t know. At the beginning it wasn’t constant seizing and seemed to be just once in a while, and like every few months, so I felt fine. But I think I really started to go into depression and anxiety towards 5th grade.
5th grade probably was one of the hardest years for me. I had a teacher who LITERALLY didn’t even believe I had epilepsy! I had friends who were full of lies, I would lose hair from my medication, I had students in my class who would go and act like there seizing, and I felt like I was surrounded by dozens of 5 year old children. I hated it.
The more often I had my seizures, the more I got affected mentally. When I had depression it wasn’t like I was depressed because I had no friends, people weren’t helping me when they were but it was me, myself that just was not understanding what was happening to me.
I remember one day for my 5th grade class we did some sort of group project and while we were working, some other group of boys started to act like they were seizing, and saying help and laughing, but my very kind friend told the boys to stop it, it’s not nice! I was very thankful she did that. At that time I just didn’t have the confidence to stand up for myself. I was just too scared. Another time, class was just about to end and as we were cleaning up, a boy walked up to me and flashed a light in my face and said, “seizure, seizure” then walked away. In my mind, I was like well that’s rude, why did you do that? I just felt I was getting thrown under the bus.
Hair problems. When I got put on new meds, the effects were tiredness, and losing my hair. My hair would fall out all the time. One time I was sitting down with a few friends, and they spotted some hair on the floor, and they were immature and of course one person would say “that’s not my hair” Then somebody said, “Annie it looks like your hair.” and I was like no it’s not, but a girl said, “its red.” I just rolled my eyes and got back to my desk feeling embarrassment.
With my 5th grade teacher, I struggled for her to trust me. When it was meet the teacher day, we told her some stuff about me, and the whole time my mom and I could totally see she did not believe us. She didn’t believe till I actually got a feeling (seizure) in class. A feeling is like a roll in my stomach, with a hot-flash, and starting to get dizzy. I got sent to the nurse, and walked there with my two friends, when actually my mom was mad that she didn’t put me in a wheelchair, but I would just be too embarrassed. I got to the nurse, she gave me my emergency pill, told the girls to go grab my stuff as she calls my mom.
The whole time after that everything was a blur. I came home and stayed home for a few days, came back, and the teacher finally believed that I have epilepsy. I thought fifth grade was going to go great but it didn’t. I thought at that time, when was my life going to get better? Never.
Literally My Thoughts 