Contributed by Shirley Price

Grandparents play a major part in the lives of many children. There is a wealth of wisdom, and a ton of love that many of these children get in addition to that of their parents. It really is a two way street because as much as the children can benefit from their grandparents, we grandparents gain so much pleasure from our grandkids. Grandchildren also give us a great excuse to do things that we would never otherwise do at this stage of our lives because we think we are too old.

My parents were both lucky and very blessed. They had five very healthy children who were easily high achievers in grade school, high school, and college. It was probably a good thing for them too, because I was raised on a working dairy farm in mid-Michigan and my father worked two farms about 17 miles apart in order to provide for us and his aged parents. He would not have had the time or energy for a special needs child.

A Different Child

The parents of kids with epilepsy in this community might be interested to know that research on the effect of dietary therapy on childhood epilepsy is moving forward rapidly. The ketogenic diet, if you're not already familiar with it, is a diet that carefully controls and balances nutrients to provide low carbs, adequate protein, and high fat, in order to change the way the body uses nutrients.

A Big Year in Ketogenic Diet Research

Diagnosis: a large abdominal mass Prognosis: being a vegetable!

Luckily the good experienced doctors got it all wrong.

My name is Sam and I want to share with you my son Peter's story of epilepsy since 1990. I'll cut this as short as I can. You will note that in my story the fine medical doctors are far from perfect to say the least. Further, medical schools and the drug companies believe or pretend to believe they have all the right answers. Well, they don't!

Please do not be bullied and do not be afraid to question every doctor's statements.

Finally, a thorough article outlining the complexities and dangers of having epilepsy. The April 20th edition of Newsweek magazine did a front page story on "The Mystery of Epilepsy - Why we must find a cure". Great to see this kind of recognition from a major publisher.

13 Full pages have been dedicated to the story. The title of the article is "A Storm in the Brain - The toll of epilepsy has been overlooked and research underfunded - for too long. A call to action".

Recently I started to blog on another Epilepsy website called EpilepsyOutreach.org based in Chicago. The executive director, Erin Leyden who I was able to meet in person, set me up my own personal blog on her website.

My recent blog talks about Ten Tips For Raising A Child With Special Needs!

Having dealt with these challenges for 18 years now, I was able to come up with these important tips for parents who may be overwhelmed and need a little encouragement and direction.

Once a diagnosis of epilepsy is made, the next step is to decide how to treat it. These days, there are several treatment options for epilepsy.

In a few cases, avoiding a known trigger for seizures may prevent them. However, you may not be able to avoid all seizure triggers—and avoiding them may not completely eliminate seizures. Many factors that can trigger seizures include:

Medications and side effects always come together. The most important goal is to control the seizures. If medication is prescribed, the goal must be to control the seizures with the fewest side effects possible! One must weigh the benefits of controlling seizures with the risks posed by side effects of anti-seizure medications. This is largely depend on how many seizures the child is having.

Having the opportunity to chat with Jim Abrahams from the Charlie Foundation was a real honor. It was because of Jim that my son Adam is seizure and drug free today! The ketogenic diet changed our lives and it was wonderful to chat with Jim for an hour as he recounted his story of his own son Charlie and the struggles they went through trying to gain seizure control.

Here’s an item of epilepsy news that can’t be repeated too often. WebMD offers sound advice about how to respond when someone has a seizure.

The most important rule is this: Don’t panic. Seizures can appear frightening, but they only last a few minutes at the most. They look like a medical emergency, but they’re generally not. Help other people in the area stay calm, too, asking them to make room for the person who’s having a seizure.