Why was the June Epilepsy Blog Relay Delayed Until July?

June/July Epilepsy Blog Relay

What happened to the June Epilepsy Blog Relay you ask? Well, I have discovered that when you have a parent with advanced Alzheimer’s Disease; another parent with advanced COPD, heart disease, diabetes and recovering from sepsis; and a child who was in a severe accident which required a 2 week stay in the hospital and 3 week stay in a physical rehabilitation center, and continues to be non-weight bearing for another month or so; it can be tough to get much if any work done.

Obviously, I should not be surprised by this.

Parenting and the Middle Place

Any special needs parent who has a child that needs assistance with most activities of daily living has my undying respect. My respect was there already, but now I understand on a new level.

In my case, the hope is that this is a short term situation. We hope our daughter will regain her independence and be able to do all the things she dreams of now, and in the future.

Not loving this period of my life

I’ll be honest, this is not an awesome time right now. But we all have these periods in life right? I’ve had them before and survived them. If I can survive this, I know I will have a period of bliss with my loved ones. (ugh-That’s a little corny even for me) But seriously I do believe if I can just buckle down and get through this I will learn something and be better for it.

Epilepsy Blog Relay

In any case, I am planning to run the Epilepsy Blog Relay this July to fulfill the promise I made to you and to myself. I hope you will follow along.

-Jess

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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Epilepsy