Epilepsy Foundation of East Tennessee

Hey everyone,

We visited with Lynn and Paula with the Epilepsy Foundation of East Tennessee, and I gotta' tell ya' it was an eye-opening experience. They were very informative, and they really opened up my mind to some of the misconceptions I had about epilepsy.

I didn't know epilepsy wasn't a disease. Like they were telling us, it's an episodic occurrence from mainly head injuries. (I think they said somewhere around 85% of epilepsy patients developed epilepsy from a head injury they received.)

I had no idea.

I remember in high school there was a guy there who had epilepsy, and he'd have seizures every once in a while. And it wasn't that I was afraid of him. But we were all afraid of hurting him. We wouldn't let him play football with us, and a lot of people treated him differently - like he had a disease they could catch.

I just gotta' thank Lynn and Paula for opening up my eyes because really once you get over the fear of epilepsy and understand what's going on, you realize they're just people coping with a condition.

And Lynn and Paula really trying to get out there and educate the public so that we can cut through the fear. They're giving bike helmets to kids. They're going to high schools to give talks to kids about epilepsy. They're communicating with the public, and that helps make a tremendous impact in our community.

Well, I better go for now. I just had to share some of that visit with y'all.

Blog ya' soon,
Dave Bennett