Hi McGill, thanks for your reply. This is just something that has been bugging me. (My sister passed away 2 months ago.) I know my sister did not treat the seizures that seriously when she was younger, and am not sure whether she had warnings from her parents or not, or whether her neurologists gave us much warning.
I'm sure it is difficult to get a teenager to follow advice though. I can't blame her - it is really up to the parents to educate themselves as much as possible as to how to guide their kids through life. It is also difficult for parents to provide adequate support when they separate. I realize that some people are literally so horrible to be around that the other person has no choice but to divorce, but I really wish that people who are about to make a decision to break off their marriage for selfish reasons (or cause the other person to break it off by being that horrible to be around) have a good, hard look at themselves and realize that their decisions will certainly negatively impact upon their children. And ultimately, it may be the first link in a chain that ultimately ends in your child's death.
I know this went way off topic, but my suspicion is that a lot of people don't treat seizures with the respect they deserve, mainly because they don't realize the long-term consequences. I don't know if even books harp on this at all. I suspect that if my sister had known the extent of her difficulties remembering things that were essential to hold down a job, and of course, the potential for death that each seizure brings, she would have approached seizure minimization a lot more thoroughly in her youth. Or perhaps, my parents would have.
For example, with something like boxing, most people know of the risk of dementia pugilista - each blow to the head does damage, and the dementia doesn't appear until 10-15 years later. So most people at least know the risks. The same with smoking - people know that lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease etc. are all long-term results of smoking. But I know that average people don't know anything about the long term effects of seizures, and I tend to doubt that even many of those with E really consider that:
a) a person can strongly influence their rate of seizures, through the degree of risk management they apply to their situation.
b) seizures have long term negative effects, and these effects happen in the prime of your life - potentially death and more probably - debilitating memory loss.
therefore,
c) even if you can't reduce the number of seizures down to zero, both minimization of seizures and managing seizure risks is something that really pays more dividends as it will postpone the negative consequences (memory loss or the seizure with your name on it), perhaps even into old age.
Am I off base here with this?