Anonymous, 36 year-old mom

I'm a 36 year-old single mother of three children. I was diagnosed with Left Temporal Lobe Epilepsy a little over 4 years ago. About 2 years after that I lost my job, due to having a seizure and falling into a jacuzzi tub, nearly drowning myself. Having been deemed by my neurologist unable to work for safety (mainly), coherence, and memory loss reasons the only income I had was that of my savings. Which, being a single mom hadn't been much, and didn't last very long either.

In what seemed like forever to save as much as I had, it disappeared 100 times faster. To add insult to injury (in a way), my son (13 years old at the time) was walking home with a friend and was hit by a truck. Spending a week in the hospital with him triggered a major tonic-clonic event that ended up putting me in the hospital for 2 weeks. Ever since then I have been having at the very least two grand mals a month, but there have been a few that I only had one and even none. However, those are few and far between.

The neurologist cannot figure out why I started having them. I have other seizures as well, like the absent, complex, petite mals, and some other strange and unexplainable things going on. An MRI and CAT scan showed that there is scar tissue and what's known as Hippocampus Atrophy. Unfortunately, either of those could be the cause or an effect of the seizures. That’s a piece of information, but it doesn't really change the fact that we have no idea where they came from or why. Very frustrating to say the least.

Does anyone know how difficult it is to manage a "life" being an epileptic single mom of three kids with no income? With a referral from my neurologist, I applied for SSI-Disability. It's been 2,5 years since my first application and I’m still waiting. Although I have pretty decent patience skills, the bill companies don't. When they say "stress can be a #1 trigger" they aren't kidding.

I'm losing my whole life to my new found disorderly monkey on my back and I don't know what to do. I just try my best everyday to be – or at least look like – I'm being strong for my kids. I can't just give up. The thing I want to say the most right now about this is...#EpilepsySucks.