EPILEPSY ASPIRATIONS and DREAMS
"Like birds spreading their wings, you must open your mind and believe. The wider you spread your wings, the further you will fly."
J.Babington
Having Epilepsy should not be a barrier to your aspirations and dreams. You can be whatever you want to be. You can achieve your goals if you stay positive…. don’t dwell on what you can’t do, focus your efforts on what you can do.
With this in mind, it is very important that those around us (family and friends) understand and educate themselves, about Epilepsy.
It is true however, that only the person experiencing the seizure can really know what he/she feels. This is often too hard to even begin to express in words. Before the seizure, during, and after the seizure, all have their own traumas to get over.
Also the thoughts that may creep into your mind “I wonder why my friend doesn’t speak with me”, or “I just don’t understand why, that whatever I say in a group setting doesn’t have any meaning to the other person”. All these things are easier to overcome when the people around us understand and act accordingly.
Check out below here, some of the many well-known and famous people in history, who at some point in their life experienced some form of seizures. Each one had their own struggles to cope with, and yet excelled in life to become great. They IGNORED the NEGATIVES and enhanced the POSITIVES. They all excelled in every area, to be all they dreamed they could be, and YOU can too!!
SOME OF THOSE THAT EXCELLED
Composers like Peter Tchaikovsky who is believed to have had Epilepsy. Ludwig Beethoven a great master of music may also have had seizures. These have both overcome and excelled in our music industry. During this era in history Epilepsy was known as the ‘sacred demon’. People during this time in history were treated by mystical powers.
Great General and world leader in his time, Julius Caesar was another. It was recorded that he would fall convulsing and it was during this time that Epilepsy was now to become known as the ‘falling sickness’.
Contemporary Celebrities, such as Agatha Christie, a brilliant writer, along with actors such as Richard Burton, Michael Wilding and Dan Glover. There are just too many that don’t even get known yet they are geniuses in their own field.
Other writers like Charles Dickens had Epilepsy, yet look at some of his work such as ‘Oliver Twist’. Lewis Carroll with famous stories “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. Many people having seizures express the familiar feeling of falling in a dark hole. This Lewis Carroll relates to what Alice in Wonderland, often feels,(or the objects around her) as shrinking or growing before her eyes. This is another symptom of Epilepsy.
Other well known people who suffer, or have suffered with Epilepsy:-
Hannibal (Crossed the Alps on an elephant)
Peter the Great
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
James Madison
Pope Pious IX
Harriet Tubman
William III
Composers
George Fredrick Handel
Robert Schumann
Hector Berlioz
Scientists
Sir Isaac Newton
Blaise Pascal (Fr. scientist, philosopher & mathematician)
Pythagoras
Thomas Edison
Alfred Nobel
Poets, Authors & Philosophers
Aristotle
Lord Byron
Dante
Truman Capote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Edward Lear (Eng. painter & poet)
Vachel Lindsay
Jean Moliere
Edgar Allen Poe
Sir Walter Scott
Socrates
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Athletes
Grover Cleveland Alexander (MLB)
Buddy Bell (MLB)
Allen Faneca (NFL)
Tony Greig (England; cricket)
Gary Howatt (NHL)
Bob Jones (NBA)
Florence Griffith Joyner (Olympic track)
Tony Lazzari (MLB)
Jonty Rhodes (S. Africa; cricket)
Paul Wade (Aussi football)
Greg Walker (MLB)
Mythological
Hercules
(Hence the term Morbus Hurculeus; another term for epilepsy. It was later called "morbus sacer" which means "sacred disease." )
