Issue date: 4/1/08 Section: News

Kevin Kenealy, interactive contributor to dennews.com, discusses his battle with epilepsy. Kenealy has dealt with seizures since the age of 11. (John Bailey/The Daily Eastern News)

Editor's Note: Kevin Kenealy, a staff reporter for The Daily Eastern News and contributing interactive reporter for dennews.com, gives you a first-hand look at how he's lived his life with epilepsy, a medical condition that produces seizures that affect mental and physical aspects of his life to this day.


The name of the game was Command and Conquer: Red Alert.

Its object was fairly simple: to annihilate every little graphic soldier, tank and paratrooper in site by building up your army to ridiculous proportions.

As a 21-year-old, I would still be tempted to play this game, so as an 11-year-old, I was hooked. If you hit triangle on the PlayStation One controller a certain way, you could receive infinite funds, which pretty much meant you could build anything.

There was a portion of my life where I commanded and conquered half the world. But in doing so, I paid a price.

My mom called me for breakfast that morning, and the last thing I remember was turning off the PlayStation. Next thing I knew, I had been commanded and conquered with my first seizure.

The seizure in a way stripped me of my innocence and my freedoms. I was told I couldn't ride a bike without a helmet. I remember people laughed at me for wearing a helmet and at 11 that was hard to swallow.

Feeling more as an experiment than a human being, I was given EEGs (or electroencephalogram, a test that measures the electrical activity of the brain), an MRI, CAT scans and numerous visits to doctors to find out what type of medication I should be given.

My mom was looked at as crazy and irresponsible when she was reluctant to put me on the seizure medication right away, but she was concerned about the side effects. The Department of Child and Family Services was actually called on her because of "medical neglect" regarding this issue.

I was eventually put on medication and the rest of junior high went smoothly for the most part. No seizures, no problems. Then came high school.


One Homecoming I'll never forget

Freshman year at H.L. Richards High School in Oak Lawn was going great. I was involved in anything and everything. The day of my next seizure, I had just finished South Pacific practice after school in time for the homecoming football game, where I played the clarinet in the half-time show.

I sat during that cool autumn evening in the bleachers next to my first real girlfriend and clarinetist, Katie, eating my dinner: fruit snacks.

That day, the crowd got a half-time show they didn't expect, as one minute I'm sitting there with Katie, and the next, I'm being helped into an ambulance.

Seizure No. 2.

I still went to the homecoming dance with her the following night. I was given hugs by my friends, but did not perform any out of the ordinary hippy hippy shakes to the music.

I stayed busy throughout the rest of my high school days, but fortunately stayed absent of the seizure monster.


On to Eastern Illinois University

It's hard to believe there was actually a time when I went to see a neurologist about being taken off my seizure medication. Yet, for at least four or five years, I remained seizure-free, and was given a glimpse of a world without the torment of that evil monster.

Something happened to me, however, in 2007 and 2008 that I can't fully explain.

The next seizure I recalled having following my dry spell is the one I had in the winter of 2007. My roommate returned to our Taylor Hall dorm room to find a bunch of throw up by my closet, and me lying down in the top bunk.

As rock n' roll surreal as it was, awakening in a pool of my own vomit didn't alarm me much. I had just returned from a long weekend covering Eastern Illinois' hockey team and decided to sleep it off - much to the dismay of my roommate, who suggested that I should go to the hospital.

The following seizures, one in the spring, one in June and two in the fall (one of which was the biggest of my life), were, to my knowledge, mostly stress-related.

Following the episode in the spring, I attended summer school at Eastern.

Things were looking up.

The new apartment I was renting was not like my claustrophobic-ridden dorm room. I had a good friend for a roommate; an internship at the Journal Gazette-Times Courier and it was summer on top of it.

Yet, not everything was blue skies.

I remember being hungry before I had my next seizure in June.

And, while I thought I could make it a little while longer without food that morning, as I sat at my computer, I couldn't.

Calling in to work sick, I passed out on the couch and opted not to inform the doctors back home or my mother. I informed them of the seizure I suffered after the hockey game only until months after it happened as well.


The Fall and Maturity

You don't think about the day you're going to die too often. And you certainly don't wake up wondering if today's going to be the day. At least I don't.

But I was given a great gift the morning of Nov. 15, 2007. You see, I became the reversal of my normal role: I was a journalist who made the headlines that day.

The headline "Student crashes car on Fourth Street" ran on the front page of The Daily Eastern News the next day.

That was my Saturn.

One minute, I'm driving back to school on Route 16 and the next, I'm on a headboard, in an ambulance en route back on that same road to Sarah Bush Lincoln Hospital.

On the ride there, worries of making it to class was my top priority, and I had no idea it would be my last ride in a car that was filled with memories and served as a sense of freedom.

Amazingly enough, no one was hurt and no serious property damage happened - besides a couple of signs. I came out without a scratch and was allowed to return back to Charleston that day.

I firmly believe I had a guardian angel with me that day.

There was a definite reason why this turning point happened to me.

Just a couple weeks prior, I was planning a trip to an Oklahoma Indian Reservation for a photo essay for my Advanced Photo class.

But now my car was more of a rumpled pop can and Jesse White's Illinois Secretary of State department took my freedom card, or driver's license, away for six months.

It's almost ridiculous to think how small the world used to be. You could just jump in your car and go. My world went from endless to limited only to campus. My transportation went from my wheels to my heels.

The glass half empty-half /half-full philosophy has helped me through this many times and when I have been most down, I've joked that at least I don't have a peg leg.

My ultimate goal is to remain seizure-free for the rest of my life, but I know that I could very well live with the command-and-conquer disorder forever. That being said, I had yet another seizure after the car accident.

So since the wreck, I have changed my stress-ridden lifestyle and replaced it with one that consists of more sleep, a healthier diet, more exercise and more of a push to take my seizure medication.

The question you may be wondering is "why write this?"

I'm writing this for awareness.

While not everyone is epileptic, no one knows when an important turning point may happen in his or her life.

So, my advice is to not be ready for it.

I wasn't ready for mine, but I learned how to adapt when it comes.


Epilepsy by the numbers

-10 percent of our nation's population will experience a form of a seizure in their lifetime.

-70 percent of people with epilepsy can be expected to enter remission. This is defined as people that are on medication and haven't had a seizure for five years or more.

-200,000 new cases of seizures and epilepsy happen each year.

-45,000 children under 15 years old develop epilepsy each year.

-More than 3 million people in U.S. have some form of epilepsy.

Source: http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/about/



Kevin Kenealy can be reached at 581-7942 or kpkenealy@eiu.edu.

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