My journey from patient to employee

When I was 13 years old, I remember eating my breakfast and next thing I knew, my mom was repeatedly asking me why I wasn’t responding to her. I was having my first seizure.

The start of my journey

This was the beginning of my journey with epilepsy. For two and a half years, I had seizures everywhere — from the classroom to the basketball court — as many as 8 to 12 a month. I learned that before a seizure, I’d feel like I was outside of my body, as if I was looking down at everything around me. Then I would wake up and not remember anything. Some medication made me feel like a zombie, or tired, moody, and I was barely eating meals. I felt as though I was not living my life.

But I wouldn’t give up and neither would my team at Boston Children’s. The moment my neurologist, Dr. Ann Poduri, asked if I would be willing to have resection surgery, which would remove the area in my brain where the seizures occurred, my answer was “yes.” The thought of being seizure-free was extraordinary. Dr. Joseph Madsen, a pediatric neurosurgeon who specializes in epilepsy surgery, made sure to explain the surgery to me in detail, in a way I could understand. I had the surgery one year later. Thanks to Dr. Madsen and the rest of the Boston Children’s team, I’m now more than seven years seizure-free.

A new beginning

Dr. Madsen, Dr. Poduri, and the rest of the team at Boston Children’s have made it possible for me to achieve so much in life. I graduated recently from Stonehill College and am living on my own. I’m now working at Boston Children’s as a patient experience representative. And even better, I was given the chance to work in the Neurosurgery Department.

It feels amazing to be a part of a team that helps patients just like me. I understand the families’ feelings of uncertainty, but I also know how the possibility of being seizure free feels. Getting to work in the department that changed my life for the better is another dream I have achieved. Boston Children’s is an amazing place, a place that has truly changed my life.

Learn more about the Epilepsy Center.