But my husband is fantastic about it. His mother doesn’t quite understand as much – perhaps well edit that bit! (laughs). But he is very good and you know, when I started seeing him, went and bought books on epilepsy. And found out about it. And I’m very lucky, all the people around me have always accepted it;

And you said that your husband’s been a really good support over the years. In what way has be been a really good support?

Hes very calm about it and I think, when you come round from a fit you don’t want to know that all hell has let loose. Hes very calm and hell put me to bed and hell, you know, put me into my pyjamas. And put on a little night light so it’s not bright and hell just be, not sitting there like, I don’t wake up to this worried face, hes just listening out for me waking up. And because theres that time with me, theres that time between the end of a seizure and me coming round, in that time hell have made preparations for tomorrow or made sure someone could be with me. Or just, and it doesn’t faze him as far as hes concerned, you know, its just anything, it could be anything;

How did the counsellors help?

It was nice to be able to bring out all your problems with somebody out of your house. You know you can talk to a limit with your parents, who don’t really know about it. The counsellors are different people again. I think I’m lucky with the Support Group Leader that we go to, shes a counsellor but she doesn’t specialise in this medical condition, but she knows how to talk to people, she makes you feel welcome.

I think that’s an excellent service, I was so impressed with that. Because you’ve got somebody you can ring, shell [epilepsy nurse] find out your answers and they’ll ring back to you, which is the thing that I’ve been most impressed with the level of care by the specialists.

…So when I sent that fax, when I was having problems with the Keppra (levetiracetam) she then rang me back and said ‘You know you can ring me up don’t you?’ ‘Oh no I didn’t. And they just said ‘OK I understand what’s going on, so in the meantime this is what I think you should do. Which is what I was doing, I just changed the dose because I was starting with the dose in the morning and I just changed it to the night so I didn’t have to take it before I went to work. But I slept like the dead. And she said ‘OK well just do that and then next week just play with it, see if you can introduce it in the day. And so I tried that again and I was just this space cadet at work, I just couldn’t, I couldn’t work, and I just rang up and said ‘I can’t, I can’t do it. And she said ‘All right.

At what stage did you contact them [epilepsy organisation]?

More or less immediately, as soon as I came out of hospital, having been told that I’d got epilepsy I thought, well I’ve got to find out as much as I can about this, so I contacted them. They as I say were very good, I joined the association, been a member of the association ever since. I even wrote an article at one stage in their magazine just to sort of talk through my experiences and the fact that, having lost my job originally, I’d won it back, which

Did they help you during the case at all?

Yes, well they did because they offered advice. I think what happened was, when I won that appeal, they were the ones that managed to find out that a similar set of circumstances had occurred to another police officer down south somewhere. And as a consequence I became like the second police officer to win an appeal to get my job back. So in that respect, had they not offered that assistance, we might never have found out about this other police officer. And not knowing about this other police officer we wouldn’t have known how to have framed our appeal if you like. Basically we followed exactly what they’d done, and then if it was good enough for that guy then it was good enough for me. So we won because of the Epilepsy Association. Unfortunately I had the relapse, but that’s not their fault.

When did you find out about the support group and join it?

It was quite a few years ago. Basically I started the group, being an unknown to what epilepsy was about. And I mean I knew bits and pieces about my fits, what I had to do, what tablets I had to take, you know and stuff like that. But I found joining a support group was very beneficial for me, very beneficial. It helped me with talking to people about my epilepsy as a whole, and also listening to others. And I found that, I found out more information through that, from just one meeting alone than I would have learnt in well say several months. But, and I must admit, now that I understand other people and their side of what they go through with epilepsy, I also find a new sort of found respect of my own epilepsy as well as everybody elses. Yeah I’ve always loved going to the meetings yeah, and making new friends, meeting people, making friends and that’s what it’s all about.

Well I sort of have a global spirituality. I’m a bit sort of New Age but I believe in Buddhism and Hinduism and things like that. And I believe that [my son] been put on this earth to teach me a lesson I have to learn. I’m not a conventional European person (laughs). I think my belief in this sort of, I believe that my spirituality helps me keep going really. I’m not sure if I was a Christian and, it would be different. I think within the Christian communities they have to rely on each other and with somebody with epilepsy you have to rely on yourself. And that’s what I’ve learnt over the years is self-reliance, and using my own intuition. If you feel that something is going drastically wrong, go to the doctor straight away, don’t wait. If you’re found out to not be right that’s fair enough, but your child depends on it.

Now there was, we used – you can see the picture over the back there – our old dog, we lost him a couple of years ago and he always used to sit in there, and that’s my chair. Now sometimes if I was um, having a funny turn it’s weird because, sometimes if you just sort of flop off into a thing, people don’t realise it you know. But he would, it was weird really because he would be there pushing and that, or hed go and tell somebody else; it was weird really, you know how they knew. You know it’s funny.

So he would alert somebody else?

He would alert somebody or try and push you, you know to sort of rouse you, it was weird really, you know if you were sort of um.

Did you find that quite reassuring?

Yeah, it’s funny really because there was somebody there you know what I mean, really, yeah.

Good

Yeah a couple of times you know, I mean, when you sort of pull yourself round, you know when came and there was him sitting there and pushing you know, on his chair. Weird really.