Last spring, Benny Smith began having epileptic seizures. In his fifth-grade English class, he fell out of his chair and found he couldn’t move. It soon got so bad for the 11-year-old, in fact, that his falls even led to several concussions.
And when he’d wake up, he’d feel terrible, too — “a bit like a hangover,” Benny tells his mother, Christine Ristaino, on a recent visit to StoryCorps.
Just don’t ask him what a hangover feels like.
“You told it to me!” he tells her.
After a while, the situation made it unsafe for him to be at school. He spent much of the first half of this school year — sixth grade — being tutored at home. He returned to the classroom last month.
The Epilepsy Network is a worldwide community of people with epilepsy, family and friends, uniting to talk about their experiences, learn information about epilepsy, ask questions and so much more! Don’t let epilepsy defeat you, let it inspire you!
