Navigating life with epilepsy
“I AM a person with epilepsy, but epilepsy does not define me.”
Those are the words of a young Athenry woman living with the neurological condition which affects the brain and causes repeated seizures.
Rachel Langan (22) was diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of 17, after experiencing three seizures within three months.
She had recently started sixth year (Leaving Cert) in school and was shocked to receive the diagnosis at University Hospital Galway.
She told The Tuam Herald that she had the first seizure in the car, while returning home from a family trip at the end of July 2021, which left her partially paralysed on the left side of her body.
“We had just come past Limerick, so Mum turned the car around and we went straight to Limerick University Hospital, where at aged 17, they told me I had a stroke.
“I was in the hospital for about a week, but they didn’t do any tests. I was just sitting in a ward not knowing what happened, but it had not happened again,” explained Rachel.
She was released from the hospital with instructions to keep an eye on her blood pressure, which the doctors believed had caused the stroke.
Just a month later, Rachel was brought to Galway University Hospital following a second seizure.
“I don’t really remember what happened that time, but I was in a hospital again with no diagnosis. There were no tests done either and I was told that they didn’t really know what had caused this.”
Rachel returned home again without any clarity, only to be brought to the hospital a third time nearly a month later.
But this time she got answers and a ....................
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