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“.

Jessica K. Smith Founder and CEO; Executive Director

Jessica Keenan Smith is a patient advocate and epilepsy community leader with more than 15 years of experience. As Founder and CEO of Living Well With Epilepsy and Executive Director of ASENT she bridges the gap between the scientific and patient communities, with a particular focus on the needs of the epilepsies. Jessica Keenan Smith is Founder and CEO of Living Well With Epilepsy, an award winning online resource for people affected by epilepsy to share stories and access in-depth information on the disease. Since 2009, Living Well With Epilepsy (https://livingwellwithepilepsy.com) has been featured in Forbes, Wired, NBC, NPR and the cover story of Epilepsy Advocate Magazine and has partnered with companies such as UCB, Lundbeck, Sunovion, Eisai, and more. Ms. Smith is also the Executive Director of the American Society for Experimental Neurotherapeutics (ASENT) (https://asent.org), an organization that brings together leaders from industry, academia, government and advocacy who are engaged in bringing drugs and devices to market across all neurologic disease states. In this role she is responsible for leading a successful scientific journal and annual scientific conference with speakers from all over the world.

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