It was an amazing day, yesterday.
The Occidental College Girls' Lacrosse team out did themselves, supporting their captain, Lauren Wemple, who has epilepsy. Here they are pre-game, getting pumped and warmed up.
Here we are, pre-game, getting pumped and warmed up:
Here is Sophie, walking the field:
Here is Lauren and her friend Hilary -- before the game:
The team:
A bit of the game:
Here I am, making a short speech in the press box at half-time.**
Here's the team, graciously walking across the field, despite a very close game, lost by one point.
I'm so grateful that our family had the opportunity to do this with Lauren, to meet her and her beautiful team-mates, friends and family. I'm grateful, too, for my friends Susan and Lisa and their boys who came out to support us. It was a memorable day for all of us.
**Here's my speech:
Hi, there! I am so honored to be standing before you this
beautiful afternoon and to tell you a bit of our story. My daughter Sophie was
born eighteen years ago in New York City, a typical baby girl, and my husband
and I had expectations that she would continue to be a typical – perhaps
extraordinary individual – whom we would love with all of our hearts. When
Sophie was nearly three months old, she developed a rare form of epilepsy
called infantile spasms that appeared, seemingly, out of the blue, and despite
more than twenty-five medications, special diets and countless alternative
treatments, her seizures continued unabated, daily, severely impacting her
development and thrusting us, her family into a very different world than the
one we had expected. We would never find the cause of her seizures, despite the
best minds in neurology studying her.
Lauren has
asked me to share her story as well. She describes her health as an ever-engaging,
ever-developing, and ever-challenging facet of her life. Epilepsy has
manifested itself in several different types of seizures for Lauren since she
was 14. As time has gone on, she has faced these different forms of the disease
head on, wanting nothing more than to subdue her symptoms and continue life as
normal. The reality is, just as her body gets used to different medications and
different doses, the symptoms of her epilepsy change. it has taken emotional
struggle and years of frustration to finally come to terms that there probably
will never be a complete solution. But epilepsy does not define who she is. It
does not define her identity as an educated young woman, an NCAA athlete, a
captain, a musician, a daughter, a sister, and a friend. She says she has
accepted this difference and coped by putting her whole heart and body into
living her life.
1 in 26 people will be diagnosed with epilepsy in their
lifetime and nearly 3 million people in the USA have been diagnosed with
epilepsy. An estimated 50,000 deaths occur each year in the USA from prolonged
seizures, Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy and other seizure-related
causes. That is more than the number of deaths due to breast cancer each year.
It is indeed sobering, and we are grateful to Lauren and the Occidental
Lacrosse Team for bringing so much attention to our fight to End Epilepsy. Despite the struggles of my daughter and the
impact of her seizures on our family, my husband, our sons Henry and Oliver, we
have much for which to hope. Recently, President Obama, probably your most
famous graduate (after Lauren, of course!) mentioned epilepsy as one of the
diseases that will be getting attention in the new Brain Initiative. We have
all of you who know a little bit more today about this disease and its broad
impact on our community. We hope that
you will go out and share it with everyone you know.
You know, despite the incredible hardships we’ve experienced
as a family witnessing the devastating impact of epilepsy on Sophie, our
expectation that we would have an extraordinary daughter whom we would love
with all of our hearts has been fulfilled. Sophie is extraordinary. She
inspires us every single day. She is brave and beautiful and graceful and
worthy, and we are honored to share her story with you. We know that Lauren is brave and beautiful
and graceful and worthy, too, (and a
dang good lacrosse player!) and are proud to stand with her and her team and
ask you to help us to end epilepsy.
Thank you for having us here. Thank you.
