Ever since my son was diagnosed with epilepsy at age 17, things have been a struggle. Prior to the diagnosis, my son was a decent student and life was good.
After the diagnosis, he became a different person. The medications he started taking affected his personality and made him very sluggish and tired. Besides epilepsy, he was diagnosed with OCD, which is a miserable condition that fills one's mind with irrelevant and distracting thoughts.
So, instead of studying for his exams, my son would be either sleeping or affected by the OCD to the point that he could not focus on anything.
He failed high school, which was absolutely devastating as we are a family that values education and does everything possible to create an environment that is conducive to learning in our home.
Medication was both helping and hurting, and it seemed like there was no end in sight, especially after my son failed another semester of high school and experienced his first tonic clonic seizure as well. In addition, he lost about 30 pounds, and I feared that something was really seriously wrong.
I started wondering about my son's future due to all the worrisome changes.
If you are a parent, perhaps you feel some of my pain.
This last semester of high school was the absolute hardest. Every single day I had to tell my son to wake up and study. I was reduced to tears more than once and felt hopeless at times because I did not feel like my words were registering.
Although we are from the U.S., we live in a different country, and the educational standards here are very stringent. The curriculum requires a lot of memorization, which is very difficult when you are taking medications that affect your memory. The system here is such that less than 50% of high school students pass in any particular year, and there are no special accommodations for people with health challenges.
My son is close to 20 years old now, and most of his friends have moved on in their lives. We again spent this summer waiting to find out the results of his final high school exams. I was both hopeful and frightened and we all expected the worst. But by God's will, this time the news was positive, and he now has a high school diploma which will allow him to study in the university.
I am crying as I write this because it is a dream come true, and something that I always took for granted turned out to be much more difficult than I ever expected. I have written about some of our struggles over the past couple of years on this forum, and I have received a lot of support and encouragement from the kind people here, so I naturally wanted to share our good news with the hope that it may help and inspire others who are going through similar issues.
My son is still facing numerous challenges, but after adjusting his medications we seem to have found a combination that is working for him. I can see now that he is more clear-headed and is behaving more like his normal self. I have another child with epilepsy and he, too, is doing better since we made recent adjustments to his medications. Please pray for us because passing high school is only the first step to what's ahead, but I now feel extremely optimistic about the future and what it holds for my son.
Thanks for listening.
After the diagnosis, he became a different person. The medications he started taking affected his personality and made him very sluggish and tired. Besides epilepsy, he was diagnosed with OCD, which is a miserable condition that fills one's mind with irrelevant and distracting thoughts.
So, instead of studying for his exams, my son would be either sleeping or affected by the OCD to the point that he could not focus on anything.
He failed high school, which was absolutely devastating as we are a family that values education and does everything possible to create an environment that is conducive to learning in our home.
Medication was both helping and hurting, and it seemed like there was no end in sight, especially after my son failed another semester of high school and experienced his first tonic clonic seizure as well. In addition, he lost about 30 pounds, and I feared that something was really seriously wrong.
I started wondering about my son's future due to all the worrisome changes.
If you are a parent, perhaps you feel some of my pain.
This last semester of high school was the absolute hardest. Every single day I had to tell my son to wake up and study. I was reduced to tears more than once and felt hopeless at times because I did not feel like my words were registering.
Although we are from the U.S., we live in a different country, and the educational standards here are very stringent. The curriculum requires a lot of memorization, which is very difficult when you are taking medications that affect your memory. The system here is such that less than 50% of high school students pass in any particular year, and there are no special accommodations for people with health challenges.
My son is close to 20 years old now, and most of his friends have moved on in their lives. We again spent this summer waiting to find out the results of his final high school exams. I was both hopeful and frightened and we all expected the worst. But by God's will, this time the news was positive, and he now has a high school diploma which will allow him to study in the university.
I am crying as I write this because it is a dream come true, and something that I always took for granted turned out to be much more difficult than I ever expected. I have written about some of our struggles over the past couple of years on this forum, and I have received a lot of support and encouragement from the kind people here, so I naturally wanted to share our good news with the hope that it may help and inspire others who are going through similar issues.
My son is still facing numerous challenges, but after adjusting his medications we seem to have found a combination that is working for him. I can see now that he is more clear-headed and is behaving more like his normal self. I have another child with epilepsy and he, too, is doing better since we made recent adjustments to his medications. Please pray for us because passing high school is only the first step to what's ahead, but I now feel extremely optimistic about the future and what it holds for my son.
Thanks for listening.
