Epilepsy is still one of those disorders shrouded in mystery. Often an injury or a fever can bring it on abruptly. It can start early in life and then disappear, or it can onset later to cleave to life and make it more difficult and hard to live life to the fullest.
In A Great Place for a Seizure by Terry Tracy we follow the life of Mischa Dunn. Beginning her seizures after her 14th birthday, she has had to live with them for as long as she can remember. Words such as aura, grand mal, petit mall and others mean more to those who have experienced them, and their caretakers and friends then to most anyone else. Those uninitiated to epilepsy or seizures may have heard the words vaguely and might even have a good understanding and yet unless you have been there they are only words.
Building a life around the possibility of seizure is difficult and overbearing for some, yet Terry Tracy has done a great job of creating a character who lives her life with dignity and grace, regardless of her disability. We follow Mischa's life through school, college, work, marriage and patenthood, and we learn the lessons of the flaws that afflict others, and I would have to say we take a lesson from the characterization of this work. Not everyone with epilepsy is able to relegate it the way that Mischa does, and yet the same can be said of most people on life in particular. It is not everyone that can live a life of grace and caring, with or without illness, and it is quite instructive to get a depth of information about such a secretive disability, though the life and courage of such a brave character.
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