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Epilepsy’s dirty little secret


Epilepsy is not that serious, right? I mean, its not like you can die from it or anything. Right?

According to the American Epilepsy Society, “it is very uncommon but not unheard of for people to die with a seizure.”

‘Rare’ and ‘very uncommon’ are what patients hear from medical professionals when they ask the question, “Can I die from epilepsy?” But after having epilepsy for years, I just didn’t believe that the odds were in our favor, considering 3 Million people in the USA have it. So I did a little digging.

It didn’t take much. I quickly found that the AES considers ‘very uncommon’ to be approximately 45,000 deaths each year. According to the Epilepsy Foundation of America, about the same number of people die each year from seizures as die from either breast cancer or traffic accidents.

Yep, you read that right. Breast Cancer and Traffic Accidents. And really, how often are we walking to raise money for epilepsy or passing laws to fight for all those people dying from seizures?

Like I said the odds were not in our favor, there are more people in the USA (3 million) with epilepsy than there are people living with:

Autism (1.5 million)
Parkinsons (1.5 million)
MS (400,000)

Okay, so you know the secret. But what can you do? Well, start by talking about it. Below are some sites you can visit that are talking about epilepsy.

CURE
Talk About It
Epilepsy.com

For additional resources, check out my Epilepsy Resources section. And, for more startling statistics read Jon Meacham’s article in Newsweek titled “A Storm in the Brain“.

Follow Jessica K. Smith:

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Founder and CEO Jessica brings a unique perspective to this leading epilepsy blog as she was diagnosed with epilepsy as a teen. She also brings 20+ years experience in marketing.

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