It was the summer of 2012 and Elizabeth Paley was at a camp with two friends. She was expecting to have a fun time, but things changed.
“Little did any of us know,” she says, “that this enjoyable weekend would turn surreal in a matter of minutes.”
The first morning she was at camp Elizabeth collapsed and hit her head on a table. When she woke up she was surrounded by paramedics and a crowd of onlookers.
The teenager had suffered a seizure.
Rather than spending the weekend with her friends, Elizabeth found herself moving from hospital to hospital for procedures including a CT scan and an electroencephalography (EEG), which measures electrical activity in the brain. Doctors diagnosed her as having a seizure disorder and put her on medication. Elizabeth was later diagnosed as having primary generalized epilepsy.
“For a great deal of time following my diagnosis, I thought that having epilepsy was the worst thing to have happened to me,” she recalls. “I was a teenager who had to start taking medication daily (and) wear a medical alert bracelet broadcasting my condition.”
Most frustrating for her was at the time Elizabeth knew she would not be able to join her classmates at Burlington’s Assumption Catholic Secondary School on a much-anticipated school trip to the Dominican Republic in the upcoming school year.
But, despite the negative consequences, Elizabeth says there were good things that followed her diagnosis — the most important being that epilepsy has shaped her perception of others and has helped guide her on the path to an enriching career.
Now 18, Elizabeth will be enrolling in Humber College’s child and youth worker program in September. She explains the role her diagnosis played a role in her career choice.
“While I have known for a long time that I want to help people in my future, my diagnosis with epilepsy certainly confirmed this,” she says. “I feel that helping children while they are still young is the key to solving some of their problems in the future.”
To help fund her studies, Elizabeth has been awarded an OBCL scholarship. She is one of six Ontario students to receive the scholarship this year.
Aside from Elizabeth’s scholastic achievements — she has maintained a spot on the honour roll throughout high school — the recent Grade 12 graduate is active in volunteering. Having started volunteering with her grandmother at the Good Shepherd Centre when she was 15, it’s an important part of Elizabeth’s life she plans to continue once she moves to Toronto for school. She says she would like to pursue volunteering opportunities related to epilepsy.
“After I discovered Epilepsy Ontario as well as this scholarship, I became aware of the many volunteer opportunities present in Toronto regarding epilepsy,” she says. “While my life with epilepsy may only be beginning, I am no longer ashamed of my condition’s name.”
OBCL has been supporting students with epilepsy through the scholarship awards since 2006. Every year, up to 10 Ontario students win a $1,000 scholarship for post-secondary education. As part of their application package, students must submit a personal essay under that year’s theme.
Writer: Deron Hamel
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