It started a few years ago. Well, actually it started when I was born, but we didn’t discovered it until a few years ago. Five years, to be exact. Yeah, I’m talking about a disease. I was born with Epilepsy and I’ve lived with it in my whole life until now, 15 years later.

One time I was in England with my cousin her mother, my aunt. That was six years ago, and they discovered that I was a little bit different. They didn’t know what, but they understood that it was something. Because when we would go somewhere I just stopped suddenly, and I could say things without any context. When we came back to Sweden again, they didn't think more about that but I never forgot it.

I thought about it all the time, the feeling was so strange. I didn’t really know what happened, but I knew that I wasn’t like other kids. Already at the daycare center I knew that something happened to me, but I was afraid to tell my parents about it because I thought that they would adopt me away or something. When I was older and went in school, I had to do my homework’s over and over again. It didn't matter how much I struggled, I always had to start over every time I had a seizure. It meant that my self-confidence dropped a lot.

I was 10 years old when my parents found out that something were very wrong, it was when I would tell them about a little trip. I started to tell them my story and I laughed and smiled, but suddenly I started to sing instead. They gave my uncle, who is a doctor, a call and he told them that I could have Childhood Epilepsy. Immediately, me and my family went to the hospital to take some tests. My uncle was right, I had Epilepsy and who know how long I have had it? It must have been several years. Then I started with the medication, I got more and more medicine each week. When I had come up to full dose I ate 175 grams per day, and it didn't taste very good.

Every day in four years I ate that thing which had the really bad taste, on every vacation I needed to take the medicine with me. If I had forgotten to take the medicine, my parents started to argue with me. They did it for my best, of course. But it was so annoying!

On my third large examination, four years later, I was told that I could slowly stop eating medicine. I was so happy, I told everyone I knew and they were also happy for me. But it was like a prayer I read at the confirmation camp this year, sometimes I was so afraid of getting sick again that I didn't dare to be happy that I was almost cured.

I waited and waited, in a whole year I waited and there was nothing I could do. Finally, the doctor sent me an e-mail where he called me to one final examination. I was so happy, and I really felt how my heart almost jumped out of my chest of happiness.

I did the examination, and started to wait again. I waited and waited, the whole summer I waited. After the summer vacation I started in a new class, 9B3, and I was still waiting.

During the second school week I received a text message to my dad, he wrote “I talked to the doctor who said that you can almost be seen as healthy. You don’t always need to carry the emergency medication with you. The only thing you shouldn’t do is to swim alone in a few more years. Good huh?”. Sure, it was good. It was great, finally I could relax. I was in school when this happened, so I ran to all my friends to tell them the news. Everybody smiled and gave me a big hug, that was really happiness for me. And when I came home from school that day, I called one of my best friends from childhood. She started to cry when I told her the news, then I also started to cry. It’s like a stupid thing we have. If she cry, I cry - if I cry, she starts to cry.

Now I’m living my life without Epilepsy and medicine, but I’m still having very bad self-confidence. I wonder if I ever will be normal. I wonder if my confidence ever will be really good, but at the same time I’m happy of all this.

I’m happy that I could get through everything, and I’m happy because I really know that my family will always be here on my side when I’m in trouble or feeling sad.


Yeah, this was the short story about my life living with Epilepsy.