This series features inspiring individuals who are living happy, productive, and socially-active lives despite their epilepsy. Their ages and professions vary, as do all the types of seizures they have: tonic-clonic (gran-mal), complex partial (petit-mal), absence, and focal. Guests have productive lives while being treated with medications, devices like the Vagus Nerve Stimulator (VNS), Responsive Neurostimulator (RNS), and lobectomy surgery. Epilepsy has cost many their jobs, but they've found new ones, changed careers, got new laws passed, or started their own companies. Another segment of each episode features a famous person who had epilepsy. Be encouraged to become an epilepsy warrior with the realization that you may have epilepsy, but epilepsy doesn't have you!
Welcome to this debut of the third season The Epilepsy Gangster! We take you on a violinist’s life-long journey with epilepsy. When 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl heard how remarkably she’d recovered from a revolutionary operation over 30 years ago, she interviewed her. Now this woman has much more hope to give us about her epilepsy, marriage, family, and her music.
Welcome back to a brand new season of The Epilepsy Gangster! The "Kickoff" of Season 2 is with a famous college head football coach. Americans learned about his epilepsy at the same time he did when a seizure occurred during a nationally televised game. But hear how that incident actually saved him from death by cancer and how he's returned to prominence. Likewise, a Canadian weightlifting champion is coaching others to win in the sport, and in life, whether they have epilepsy.
"Living On" is two tales of families with children killed by epilepsy who did not get locked into bitterness and grief. Little is known about why Sudden Unexpected Death in EPilepsy (SUDEP) kills, as it has for eons, but it's only recently that doctors and first-responders have recognized it and are making strides in saving lives. Now, lives of people with epilepsy are being saved world-wide by these families' organizations. Hear the stories of the drivers of the Danny Did Foundation and When The Trumpet Sounds.
"We, the People" --Two people took action with the government on behalf of the epileptic community rather than wait for other to fight for them. A.J. Taylor wanted Georgia to be part of the seizure-safe school movement in America. He worked until his governor signed the law that legislators named in his honor. Following Angie Nieters' loss of daughter Jami to SUDEP, she shared her pain and outrage with her representative that doctors never informed her of the risk of death. Jami's Law requires doctors to inform newly-diagnosed people/caregivers of epilepsy about the SUDEP risk, precautions, and coroners' citations on death certificates.
Each person’s epilepsy is different, meaning that popular medications and treatments aren’t necessarily going to work for everyone. STEM CELL treatment is showing promising results for two sons of a family, when neither had been expected to live with conventional treatment. A woman’s back injuries from a seizure were serious enough to seek chiropractic treatment. She was so surprised at the reduction in her seizures that followed that she became a chiropractor!
Who hasn’t questioned that if there is a loving god, why is there so much killing, sadness, and sickness? Pastors Chris Maxwell and Gail Meyers share their thoughts on that after living with epilepsy. Maxwell thought his world was marvelous, writing and teaching about the Lord when encephalitis and epilepsy nearly killed him and it was necessary to rebuild. Rev. Meyers shares how epilepsy made him a better leader to people, and advises on how to not be afraid of one’s disabilities.
Meet two women who are familiar to thousands worldwide because their epilepsy didn’t beat them into a lives of oblivion and isolation! Torie Robinson’s EpilepsySparks podcast from London features international researchers and epileptologists that has made herself become a featured intercontinental speaker. Tiffany Kairos’s full-time commitment from her home produces social media reels and messages that are as important to other people’s welfare as their medications. Now, she’s presenting epilepsy to Mattel Toys!
When Austin Hansen’s seizures made him take a look at new work, he took on two new businesses of his own. Along with his sustainable ranch, he speaks to law enforcement officers on how to handle people with epilepsy. IT professional Berhe Gebrekristos’s employer accommodates his epilepsy by allowing him to work at home at his pace in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Dogs’ are able to smell an odor their human masters emit before having epileptic seizures. Then, these dogs either warn their masters and/or caregivers to prepare for seizures or can be taught to aid in their masters’ speedy recovery by fetching medicine and water. Two people share how dogs have helped their lives and an expert enlightens us on how dogs do it! Also, did you know there is actually a Patron Saint of Epilepsy? Meet the crew of Epilepsy Gangster!
An international opera singer and a playwright share their accounts of their first epileptic seizures and how it upset their lives. The woman had 3 car wrecks when she had a seizure while driving, and the man had took jobs in restaurants and roofing. Both assessed their skills and values. She wrote plays and acted with Oprah. Watch the man singing during an SEEG to make sure that a lobectomy of his temporal lobe wouldn’t disable him to perform in China.
Two men were arrested because of their postictal (not-yet-aware) behavior following seizures while driving and flying . Even though one man pulled over his car when a seizure began while he was driving, he was arrested without being given a breathalyzer test when a police officer assumed he was DUI. (He feels there might have been some racial discrimination.) A student shares how flight attendants ignored his warning that he was having a seizure, and he came-to, handcuffed in the Atlanta airport security office. Authorities ignored to his medic-alert jewelry.
In this episode, two people overcame their years of treatment of epilepsy by committing themselves to others. A former public relations executive for Star Wars Creator George Lucas’ gaming company before epilepsy struck her helps us realize that everyone managing a disability is a superhero with her upcoming graphic novel series Epilectra. A man who grew up with epilepsy, hydrocephalus AND cerebral palsy stepped back from jumping in front of a train at the last instant. He tells how he came to love himself with his disabilities, and that love is ever-increasing by making others with epilepsy learn how to love themselves.
Epilepsy often stops people from becoming romantically involved. Meet this couple who decided they wanted—and needed—each other more when the man had his first seizure just after they started dating. Hear how the relationship matured and has led them to be parents. And hear how complications giving birth caused a woman to become epileptic, and how she and her husband think epilepsy has made them be even more responsible parents than others.
Meet the boy who took his plan to have seizure-safe school through the New Jersey legislature and got to meet the Governor who signed it into law! But now in high school, he didn’t stop there. Hear what he’s doing now. And meet this woman who took on Georgia’s legislature so that now she is able to receive CBD for her epilepsy without waiting for other people to fight her battles into law.
Learn about the personal emotional pain and aggravation that led to Tim’s creation of this TV series, living with epilepsy over HALF A CENTURY! Hear how it affected every major decision of his life: college, career, residence, marriage, and ultimately fatherhood. Also meet a civil engineer who hid it for years until surgery couldn’t be ignored. After it left him incapable of doing his work, he returned to college and became a pastoral counselor to people with disabilities.
Not only did a man become a chef of international cuisine after the Epilepsy Gangster made him change jobs, he now teaches it, has his own cooking business, and set up a scholarship for disabled students. He shares it didn’t prevent him from running in 50 marathons! The other man recounts gaining personal self-confidence and shares the “Triangle of Factors” that prevent his epileptic triggers. This was after his doctor encouraged him to be a pioneer brain surgery patient when his alternative was “becoming a vegetable”.
Epilepsy is the subject of a rap video sung by Stacii Floyd. He became a rapper when doctors told him that he could no longer work as a sound technician. Painting is the medium for Chris Arceneaux who first found painting to be therapeutic, then a friend suggested that he direct his talents to painting artworks familiar to the epileptic community.
See two people who both became epileptic after teen-car accidents, and consequently discovered their career callings. One is a teacher-of-the-year for special ed high school students. She helps students find their career callings. The other became an EMT, who gave care and attention to accident victims, sometimes epileptic emergencies. She has since attended medical school to be a pediatric neurologist.
Driving restrictions are perhaps the biggest impediment to the majority of people with epilepsy. However mild a person’s seizures might be, the fact that it could happen while driving is a threat not only to them, but also to others. A school administrator had to give up driving, motorcycling, and scuba driving when she became epileptic for no apparent. A news producer lost the ability to drive 30 years ago discusses how he uses develops relationships with friends and neighbors to build a list of possible drivers, uses Uber, Lyft, and mass transit.
Unemployment or UNDER-employment are often the consequences of people with epilepsy. Companies dread being liable for injuries. Meet an educated man, who after years of such aggravations successfully started his own business, even while he was not totally recovered from surgery. Another man was looking for an IT job and became a janitor, until he approached a CEO to make a personal application. Also, that man is comfortable that his coworkers know about his seizures and what to do.
A $1.5 million movie is being made by a filmmaker with epilepsy to give people a sympathetic visual introduction to epilepsy. He believes the only weapon to cruelty known by the community is creating empathy and is a crusader against SUDEP that killed Cameron Boyce. Another man’s weapon to fight epilepsy is his daily surfing and yoga. Surfing’s set him free so much that he goes to galas where epileptic children are able to get a chance to see what surfing is all about; making friends.
Epilepsy Gangster
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