The Epilepsy Shield Project

I turned 65 yesterday and I have been getting amazing comments about my work even on my personal profile.

It is a blessing and a calling of me! It was worth having seizures for 15 years to get to this point of being an advocate.

Here are T-shirts featuring some of the best paintings from The Epilepsy Shield Project
and the book on Amazon.

The shirts come in sizes from S up to 3X in at least two styles.

Unisex Classic Tee S $11.50 - 5X $21
Unisex Short-Sleeve T-Shirt S $15 - 3X $19
Unisex Premium T-Shirt S $21 - 3X $25

Clicking on the images and the first comment will show the names of all the paintings in that series and a link to the store page for shirts with that series. Some do have other styles set up that go up to 5X.

WARNING: My paintings are designed to help us teach the public the facts about Epilepsy and they can be harsh on us and have information we know too well living with Epilepsy every day.

Painting #8 OUT OF SIGHT of the Our Reality series.

I know that people who have epilepsy will know most if not all this information, it is for the public who do not. I received a suggestion of the out of sight line then I came up with the never out of mind section creating a great way of getting the message across!

Epilepsy is not a condition with constant outwardly visible symptoms like other neurological conditions cause. The only time it is obvious that we have it to the public is when we are actually having a seizure and even then, they can unfortunately mistake it for something like drug withdrawals or an overdose.
They do not understand that we are having to deal with it all the time.
Thinking about having a seizure at any time and our safety.

Making sure we take our pills every day without messing doses because that can trigger a seizure and missing two many doses can cause Rebound Seizures because our brains have gotten used to having the medicines. I went two days without Klonopin from not being able to get it refilled and I had a Rebound Seizure that was nothing like my epileptic seizures. It was an unusually long absence and when I came out of it EMTs were already there.

Dealing with the side effects from the medicines 24/7. I use an anger emoji to represent the most well-known terrible side effect Keppra Rage which many people in the Epilepsy Community including myself just call Keprage.

Trying to avoid all our known triggers to reduce the number of seizures we have. The emoji I picked for them is one of the most common if not the most common Stress. Stress is a more common trigger than flashing lights which is the only one the public knows about because of the warning at the beginning of action movies and TV shows.
We are not allowed to drive unless we have made it seizure free for as long as the law in our area requires, ranging from 3 months to a year. I made my 6 months once and got to drive myself to the dentist for a root canal then had a seizure the next day starting over a day one.

We also must deal with having lots of medical tests trying to figure out where our seizures come from and the best treatment for them. I listed three common ones, but the are others used including an MRI and the WADA test.

EEG is a short test where the person has wires glued to their head like in the picture for reading the brainwave looking for seizure activate which is larger spikes in the brainwaves.

VEEG is a multiday test done in an Epilepsy Monitoring Unit where the patient gets wired-up with the EEG electrodes and put into a hospital bed with a video camara recording their outward symptoms too.

SEEG is a surgical procedure where the electrodes are surgically implanted into the brain through holes drill into the skull. This test gives much better readings and is normally used before brain surgery to confirm where the seizures are coming from in the brain.

WADA test is also a preoperative test when the area is in a part of the brain that could be controlling vital functions. During the test one side of the brain is put to sleep, and they see if the patient can still talk, walk… then they do the other side determining if the area is safe for surgery.

sorry, for my lack of output lately. I am getting back on track of getting paintings finished and shared, I have shared two recently. The first part of this year was one problem after another between the house, can and our medical issues.

I have more than five paintings in progress the three I expect to finish first are about Teaching People About Epilepsy with a list of facts on the left side and beliefs on the right, Epilepsy being an Invisible Condition, and on Epileptologists.

If you have a message, you think needs to be put out there for the public to see let me know, if I have done a painting on it I will reply with it for you to share and if not, I can add it to my list of ideas for paintings.

Painting #8 OUR EPILEPSY COMMUNITY of the Motivational series.

The epilepsy community is really different than most communities for medical conditions because of so many distinct types of seizures, the 160+ Seizure Disorders that fall under the diagnoses of Epilepsy, the 30+ anti-seizure medicines with so many possible side effects on the market and every case of epilepsy being different makes the sharing our experiences and knowledge is extremely helpful to others living with the condition.

Working as an advocate I have been able to help three people find an epileptologist, leading to them being able to have surgery becoming seizure free or greatly reducing the number of seizures they have. I have also had people tell me that sharing my experience of brain surgery being successful, getting me seizure free while still on medicines gave them the confidence to go through with the surgery option, their doctors had given them of which they were afraid.

We can help each other in more ways than we realize just by sharing our own stories. We can also explain the symptoms of each type of seizure to newly diagnosed members of the groups and tell people who are being switched to a new anti-seizure medicine what side effects it causes on us, so they can know what issues to look for like the most well know terrible side effect out there “Keprage”.

Every case of epilepsy is different, we all have different trigger combinations, and we all react differently to each medicine, so the more information we get from others the more chance we have of figuring things out.
I did a painting in this series about The Epilepsy Community being over 65 million people fighting together, but that number has been used for over a decade now while the number of reported cases in the US alone has gone up by at least 400,000 during that time while some websites are still saying only 50 million. We really need a new accurate count of the number of worldwide cases!

I received my Epilepsy Warriors T-shirt yesterday and it is great. If you would like one they are available in the Printful store under the Epilepsy Recognition series, the 7th one down on the left side.

They are also available in black and the premium shirts also have purple.

The link to the store is under the Shop Now button at the top of the page.

Painting #8 EPILEPSY WARRIORS of the Epilepsy Recognition Series.
Here is a painting for us to share showing the public just how many of us are out there. According to the Epilepsy Foundation there are 65 million people living with epilepsy around the world, but they have been using that number for over a decade now, so it must be higher than that because during that time the count in the US alone has gone up by at least 400,000.

Instead of saying “one of millions” I did a play off ONE IN A MILLION by saying “one in millions” and I did not want two OFs that close together “ONE OF MILLIONS OF EPILEPSY WARRIORS.”
with the larger warrior to represent the person sharing it and the small warriors in the background to represent the rest of us. I used shading on the shields to make them look angled to deflect a swords strike of to one side or the other deflecting the force and the blade. The ribbons also show a darker shade on the right side because of the angled surface. For the title line I made the lettering look like metal letters with beveled edges riveted on to go with the metal armor theme.

I think this painting will get lots of interesting comments on the shares and with it on the T-shirts I think it will get lots of comments from strangers, spreading awareness out in public.
I think we should create a more accurate count of people living around the world with epilepsy. If you can get a reliable figure of the number of people in your country fighting it then please put it into a comment, so I can start working on the new count. I know the latest count for the United States is 3.44 million, so I am starting the count there.