Health for Life - Spring 2018

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Spark of Hope Roy dealt with epilepsy for half his life, but he’s never had hope for a cure—until now.

I started telling myself it wouldn’t affect me. “

hen he was 11 years old, Roy stopped riding bikes. He no longer went swimming during the hot Kern Coun- ty summers. He learned that he would never get his driver’s license and he gave up his dreams of becoming a pro- fessional athlete. Many of the conven- tional rites of passage for boys growing into young men were suddenly no lon- ger possible for Roy. Roy Reynoso is 20 years old, and for nearly half of his life, he’s had epilepsy. Many people would see this as a tragic loss. The seizures, sometimes hap- pening as often as two or three times per week, were the only thing holding back an otherwise healthy and active child—he loved sports and being out- side with his friends, staying outside until late in the day. During the first couple of years living with his illness, Roy felt like his life was over. However, in his early teen years, Roy’s mentality changed completely. He was tired of feeling sorry for himself, sick of letting his epilepsy be his defining characteristic. Instead of succumbing to the disorder, he decided to learn how to live with it—which sometimes meant pretending he didn’t have epilepsy at all. “I started telling myself it wouldn’t affect me, and that I would keep doing what I love,” Roy says, thinking back. “I refused to give in to the epilepsy.” Even though he had a positive outlook, Roy never felt like he had his epilepsy completely under control. He

was handling it to the best of his abili- ty, and because of his strong willpower, he was doing pretty well. He was lead- ing a “normal” life, going to work and the gym regularly, enjoying early adult- hood—despite the increasing frequen- cy of his seizures. Roy’s epilepsy care, however, had been lacking. His family didn’t have the money to travel all over California seek- ing the best treatments, so he went to places his insurance covered. His former doctors were not specialized in epilepsy care and, unfortunately, couldn’t offer him much more than a series of pre- scriptions. Surgery as a treatment option for epilepsy was a taboo subject—it was never discussed with Roy and his family. Roy has a form of epilepsy that is intractable, meaning it is not entirely treatable with medication. He could take medicine to help reduce the fre- quency and severity of his seizures, but he would never be completely free of epilepsy in this way. As Roy’s family continued seeking the best treatment options available, they found Dr. Hari Veedu, neurologist, epileptologists, and Medical Director of the Kern Medical Comprehensive Ep- ilepsy Center. They were overjoyed to find that Roy could receive specialized treatment for his illness without leaving Kern County. Much to their excitement, he was selected as the first person to be ob- served in the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (EMU), where Roy is connected to a

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Kiley Norvell STAFF WRITER

Top: Roy has electrodes placed during his stay at the Kern Medical Epilepsy Center.

Bottom: Roy chats with Dr. Hari Veedu, the Medical Director of the Kern Medical Epilepsy Center.

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