Backing up just a bit, Joshua has always been a very smart, healthy and strong boy. He’s your typical wild and crazy little blonde hair, blue eyed boy. There was never a problem during pregnancy and during delivery there were not any major delivery complications (just that it took a long time!).
 

     In the beginning of this "situation", Joshua started out with having the seizures where he would become unconscious, collapse to the ground and begin to have full body convulsions (Generalized tonic clonic aka gran-mal seizures). On one of our more challenging days, he had 7 grand-mal seizures with several of those seizures lasting in excess of 5 minutes and one lasted over 9 minutes in duration.

     It feels like an eternity to see someone have a grand-mal seizure even for just one minute. The day Joshua had 7 grand mal seizures was by far the longest day of my life. Needless to say, we spent the next couple of weeks in the hospital trying to first of all control Joshua’s seizures and then secondly to find out why he was having them.

     About a year later, Joshua began having seizures where he would collapse to the ground as if he was going to have a grand mal seizure but he would remain conscience but not be able to control certain parts of his body. One time he fell to the kitchen floor with his arms and legs convulsing and all he could do was cry out to me saying, “Help me, help me”. Talk about heart breaking. I had to muster up all the courage I had to stay strong but most importantly calm for this helpless little boy, my son.

     A few months later Joshua began to have seizures where he would not collapse but he lose control of some of his body parts, in particular his upper body (Myoclonic seizures). Many times we would see his little arms and hands jolt or fly up in the air quickly. Boy, does that make for some interesting times.

     Joshua could have been the poster child or spokes person for Bounty® paper towels. I can’t begin to tell you how many clean ups we had to do because of all those seizures.

     Today Joshua experiences on the average about 15 drop seizures a day (Atonic seizures). These seizures are very short in duration, most only lasting a few seconds. They look very similar to when someone is sitting in a chair and they doze off to sleep and their head, upper body, arms and hands drop forward quickly.

     When Joshua has these seizures he does have a brief loss of consciousness and we still have to be very careful with him and the activities he engages in.

     And (hopefully) finally, Joshua every once in a while will still have the seizures that cause him to look like he is daydreaming (Petit mal aka absence seizures). Sometimes we’ll call out to him or even touch him on the shoulder or arm but he is not able to respond right away.

     After a long time of enduring many tests, numerous hospital stays, and traveling around the country visiting a variety of specialists, Joshua was diagnosed with Idiopathic Epilepsy. While other types of epilepsy may be caused by brain tumors, strokes or other neurological disorders, Idiopathic Epilepsy syndrome is a primary brain disorder that has no other identifiable cause.

     We actually had a very well known neurologist from our home state of Florida tell us that meant “Us idiots (the neurologists) can’t do the pathology”! There is a very important lesson to be learned here…

     No, Joshua is not seizure free but we have come a long way. We always try to keep our situation in to prospective. Yes, being touched by seizures can be very challenging but when I look at some of the other people I know and some of the other health conditions out there, it makes me very thankful that our challenge is seizures and Epilepsy and not anything else.

     Joshua is a typical little boy who loves to run, climb and make their messes and looking at him you'd never know there was this "situation" unless you saw him have a seizure. He goes to school and even loves the computer. We're very lucky and we know things will work out a-ok.

     Our family believes that in ALL things, comes good. SeizureSupport.com is one of the many good things that have come out of these very challenging times of Joshua having seizures. It is our sincere hope that we can continue to educate and support other people, families, caregivers and friends who are touched by seizures and Epilepsy.