People with Epilepsy are Discriminated by not only employers but the government that allows those employers to refuse to give us acceptable work.
Having spent 2/3 thirds of my life diagnosed with physco motor Epilepsy and having spent 2/3 of my life looking for a new job each time i seizured at work I learned that I was never going to be able to support my family. Wages were always sub poverty and left me with a hand to mouth existance.
In 1981 when one of the 57 neurologist who told me that I would never be a surgical candidate when i questioned him, I had 12 spike areas in my brain, was his reason. This all changed one day when i went into convultions caused by water retention caused by tegratol.
The same doctor, then told me that medicaly I could no longer be treated. Surgicaly I could. I was refered to Rush Presbyterian St. Lukes Medical Center in Chicago .
It was here where a much faster eeg machine was used to pinpoint the focal onset in my Right Temporal lobe. Surgery took place on may 22, 1981 and at 7:00 Am that morning I suffered my last seizure. I was 39 then. On June 5th. i went home and was to be off for 1 year.
3 weeks later, my employer, a fedral contractor, gave me the choice to return to work imediately or be fired. Three weeks after returning, the harassment became so bad that I had fallen into depression and was fired.
Reinstated after admitting myself to the local physc ward for treatment I was reinstated so that I would be covered on insurance.
May 5, 1982 I was released as able to return to work by my physc. I was fired the day I delivered the release to human resources for being well.
I filwed a charge of wrongful termination and discrimination with the Illinois Human Rights Commission and the charge was never investigate.
Since then i have had no Insurance, No Follow up and have had to seek physc. help from community mental health services who have no idea what the burden of normalcy is.
Without help , each person who does have this surgery should be told of these problems long before the surgery takes place and families should be advised before the surgery that they need help too.
I say this because as my behavior deterioated, my family did not know what was going on, blamed me and now at 63 years old, I have never seen my grand children, most of my kids are to terrified of me to speak to me and i never did achieve being normal.
The only way i found was to quit trying to make a living and settle for the 800 a month social security.
my ERISA guranteed retirement benefits were stolen on the same day as my medical benefits. They should have been around 35,000 a year had I ever been paid a regular wage from this company. I can not blame any one other that the government that allows this kind of thing to happen and hope some day my kids will forgive me.