Product Description

Weathering the Storms is a personal story of a lifetime of living with uncontrolled epilepsy. It is also a handbook on how to come to terms with a debilitating condition, and ultimately live a full life.
Covering life as a child, an adolescent, and employee, a wife and parent, Weathering the Storms tells of triumph over ongoing adversity. It has lessons for anyone diagnosed with a chronic illness or disability, or anyone caring for them. Above all, it is an uplifting story.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #111250 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

About the Author
There is never a day when Julie does not have some kind of epileptic seizure. Nevertheless, she has dedicated her life to writing and public speaking in order to reduce ignorance of this common condition, and help others understand it.
She has delivered hundreds of lectures and has been interviewed on many radio stations. In 2000 she was featured on the Carlton Television programme 'Your Shout'.

Customer Reviews

Weathering the Storms - a good compass!
I found Julie's book very easy to read, it left out the jargon andconcentrated on the things folk with epilepsy or their friends and familyreally want to know, like: can I really have a life now I have found out Ihave epilepsy, the answer of course is yes! I don't suffer from thiscondition but the book and Julie's attitude made me realise that who everwe are and what ever our problems, great or small it's up to us to makethe most of our lives. Nothing is impossible if you have thedetermination and even guts to do it

"The Truth of the Unspeakable Condition"
It's comforting to tell ourselves that there's a pill for every ill - although we know very well there isn't. It makes feel better to think so.

Like Mrs Dennison, I have a form of epilepsy, the temporal lobe variety (TLE), probably the commonest form yet least mentioned. There are around 40 different types of epilepsy, only rarely involving collapses.

For over 45 years, I've taken a bewildering range of medications, to 'make it go away'. It doesn't - it may calm down a certain extent, but it doesn't stop happening, however comforting that idea may be. There are people whose condition is cured, one way or another. But Mrs Dennison, I and around 300,000 others live with the knowledge that our awareness may be knocked sideways at any time, sometimes over and over again. But that's no need not to live a meaningful and productive life. Mrs Dennison, I, and many others have done so, and continue to do so. We have epilepsy - epilepsy doesn't have us. That's vital. It isn't the centre point of our lives, far from it. I only wish so many supposedly 'normally fit' people would just get out of our way and let us get on with things. I do - and so do most of the rest of us, that 300,000 or so cases in the UK alone (2 million + in the US.) It's not really a sexy, socially acceptable condition, so it's not mentioned. Too bad: has dandruff, say, ever stopped achievement? Then why should epilepsy? We live with it. Why can't so many others? So often, they're just afraid of what they think epilepsy is - and it shows. We succeed despite them.