Stephen Timewell

The four historical characters on the coverJulius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Fedor Dostoevsky, and Vincent Van Goghare all understood to have had epilepsy, but they also had successful lives as well. That is the key point of this book. Epilepsy is a curious and often misunderstood chronic disorder of the brain that affects approximately 50 million people across the globe in a variety of ways. Characterised by recurrent seizures as a result of excessive electrical discharges in a group of brain cells, epilepsy has extreme diversity with over forty different types of seizures. Besides the medical impact, the prejudices and social stigma that surround epilepsy worldwide are often more difficult to overcome than the seizures themselves. While Time Well Spent with Epilepsy is simply a memoir of my eventful life and times with epilepsy, the book hopes to highlight and demonstrate, along with the struggles surrounding the condition, that epilepsy is not necessarily an obstacle to a persons progress through life. People can have successful careers and lives despite the downsides of epilepsy.