Kirsty's story
“Oh god – people look at you like you’re a leper, like it might be catching. They don’t want to come near you.”
Kirsty is 21 and one of the estimated 5,000 Scots who have been misdiagnosed as having epilepsy. They have been prescribed ineffective, and potentially harmful drugs while the true cause of their seizures remains untreated: “I was desperate to get off the medication – it clouded my head so much, I had no concentration.”
She calls herself ‘one of the lucky ones’. Her referral to Quarriers, after several years of seizures that controlled her life and put ‘enormous stress’ on her family, resulted in a four week stay at our service. After monitoring her closely and reaching a non-epilepsy diagnosis, we took her off her epilepsy medication she had been prescribed. She’s not had a single seizure since.
“What has it done for me? It’s given me my independence – my life and my family’s lives back the way they should be. It’s given me my future, everything.
The staff at Quarriers are fantastic. They know just what to say to keep your spirits up. Meeting people who really understand what you’re talking about – staff and patients – even just to have that was such a gift. I felt less isolated, that I wasn’t on my own. It makes a really big difference.”
