Epilepsy Talk at Rotary Meeting, 10 September

More Than A Brainwave . . . . .Steve Weisinger of Swindon Phoenix Rotary Club was our after-dinner speaker on 10th September, and his specialist subject is Epilepsy.  He is an expert on this somewhat mystifying topic because he was born with the disease and he described how he has now beaten it with the help of medication and a brain operation that removed the offending parts.

It seems that all epilepsy cases are different, but all sufferers endure debilitating seizures that can be disturbing to onlookers but generally are not painful or even remembered by the victim. Steve described in some detail the happy periods he had when the seizures magically stopped, and then the trauma when they mysteriously started again after several years.

Having endured these  episodes for many years, whilst trying to hold  down  several responsible jobs,  in his forties Steve  went into  a London  hospital for some  ground- breaking surgery to remove some  scar tissue from the  left side of his brain, and lo and behold, he has been  free  of seizures ever  since.

Paul Parfrey, President of Swindon Phoenix, who accompanied Steve to our meeting, then explained how he and other Rotarians had started the  Swindon Epilepsy Support Group  to give  help  to all those  epilepsy sufferers and their carers who would otherwise have  been  isolated and alone.   With a current membership of 80+ the  group is a successful meeting place  and brings help,  advice and friendship to people, some  as young as eight, who suffer from this  crippling disease.

It was a fascinating story and an interesting meeting where we learned a little about the   progress that the medics are making into solving the problems of epilepsy by a deeper understanding of the surgical techniques for rearranging the brain furniture.