Katelyn Lewis has been seizure-free since having surgery to control her epilepsy in December 2009. Since then, her life has changed dramatically for the better, and she’s preparing to enter Confederation College in the autumn.
Katelyn, the recipient of an OBCL Epilepsy Scholarship Award for 2013, is planning to attend Confederation College’s one-year medical assistant (MLA) program in September and is on the waiting list for the college’s practical nursing program.
She plans to work for a year or two and then apply again for the nursing program. The reason she wants to be a nurse is simple: she wants to someday give back to University Hospital in London, Ont., where she had her life-changing surgery.
“My ultimate goal in life is to be a nurse and work in the epilepsy unit where I got my new life so that I can encourage others who feel the same way I felt the majority of my life,” Katelyn says.
Katelyn, a Thunder Bay resident, was diagnosed with epilepsy when she was 16 months old. She lived most of her life having as many as five tonic-clonic seizures per day, until she was 16.
That’s when the journey to her new life began.
Having been homeschooled — her mother felt this was the best option because Katelyn’s epilepsy posed learning challenges for her — and unable to participate in a lot of physical activity, Katelyn reached a point where she would no longer let her seizure disorder control her life.
This culminated on Sept. 18, 2008, when Katelyn had a status epilepticus, a series of seizures that happened one after another for four hours. She was taken to hospital but doctors and nurses were unable to stop the seizures and she ended up on life support.
Katelyn awoke the next morning to be told she had suffered brain damage and that, despite only being in Grade 9, would have to stop her education.
Katelyn did what she could to improve her situation, working on puzzles and word games, but eventually she tired of not having a social life because of her epilepsy.
That’s when she approached her doctor for a referral to the epilepsy unit at University Hospital to see if she could receive brain surgery to stop her seizures.
“I told him that I was sick of living this life, especially at 16, not having a social life, total lack of independence, and just plain sick of epilepsy in general,” says Katelyn.
She was referred to the hospital, where tests showed her seizures were coming from the right side of her brain. She was given the option of having a right temporal lobectomy, which would remove the right temporal lobe, and, hopefully, give her a seizure-free life.
On Dec. 3, 2009, Katelyn had the surgery and has not had any seizures since. This has given her a new lease on life, and she’s doing as much as she can to help others with epilepsy.
A noteworthy accomplishment for Katelyn was completing the Run for Epilepsy in Thunder Bay on Sept. 18, 2011 — three years to the day she suffered the status epilepticus.
“My half marathon raised over $8,000, which was donated to Epilepsy Ontario to be forwarded to the epilepsy unit in London so that patients like me could continue to be helped,” she says.
The OBCL Epilepsy Scholarship Awards were presented June 4 to six students in the province this year.
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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