Michael Igoe's Page

This last week was Epilepsy Awareness week.  You wouldn't have know from the mainstream media, with almost zero mention.  One exception was the Guardian newspaper (UK), 21st, which had a special supplement on the subject.  If you can bring this up, please do.  One objection, though: why direct almost all attention on children?  A problem, certainly - I should know that.  But adult careers and marriages are regularly destroyed for this most senseless reason.  That's an experience of mine…

I don’t like stereotypes very much, do you?  If you’re in a stereotyped group – and most people reading this probably are, or know well someone who is – you have good reason not to.  If you don’t fit the stereotype, you irritate people.  And that can make them doubt if you genuinely are part of that group, or just say you are.  We find a lot of stereotypes in the medical area, don’t we?  So, what’s the epilepsy stereotype?  I think I’m broadly right here.  The person with epilepsy is still a…

I think that practically anybody who reads this site will be familiar with the word ‘photosensitivity’.   Most people with no connection with epilepsy probably think it has something to do with cameras.  No it’s not, very much not.   I’ve read in one leaflet or book after another that it’s comparatively rare.  Is it really?  Or possibly we often don’t recognise it would be nearer the truth.  I’m convinced it’s far more common than these publications suggest.  And that could be…

Some time ago, I invented – as far as I know, anyway – the terms ‘epiphobia’ and ‘epiphobe’.  I think most people would agree that the usual reaction when they mention having epilepsy isn’t so much hostility as a sort of unease, uncertainty.  It’s a word, a reality, the listener would rather not hear, much the same as with almost any psychiatric condition too (which I know epilepsy isn’t).  With things like this, there’s a strange prurience.  Ask why they’re uneasy (I have done this) and…