Two Women in History with Epilepsy

Today was all planned.

An easy plan - get up, start your day with routine, go to work, come home and write tonight’s blog.  

Easy - right?

Well, things didn’t go as planned: lousy sleep, seriously sore throat, constant sneezing, mounds of kleenex and infinitesimal bits of energy.

So between hot lemon water with honey, soup, scrambled eggs or getting up to creep about and fold laundry (it took me all day) left from yesterday, I did a bit of research.  

It is still as important to me to write this blog regardless of how I am feeling. Epilepsy doesn’t get put on hold because of some other kind of sickness. Being sick with something else means I have to be more vigilant about the rest that I get.

So I roamed around Facebook today. Something besides Epilepsy Awareness month caught my eye. It is also Women’s History Month and thank you to my sister Janet for this tidbit. The post was backed with the colour purple which, in my congested condition, seemed like it should be significant. Oh yes! Purple is also the colour of Epilepsy Awareness day!

So I googled famous women with epilepsy. Did you know that there are more men in history with epilepsy than women? But I won’t go there........... My research was very cursory, however two women in history with epilepsy caught my attention:

Dame Agatha Christie - a favourite, and famous, author of mysteries.  I've loved her books since childhood, much to my grandpa's chagrin ("There's enough murder in the world without reading about it.") One of Agatha Christies bios reports that little was known about her health except that she had epilepsy. Dame Christie passed away at age eighty five. (post by Charlotte Gerber on About.com)

Harriet Tubman ~ a well known abolitionist, nurse, woman’s rights advocate, spy and scout was the victim of head injury at age ten and suffered seizures and headaches for the rest of her life. (Posts by:  Genevieve Wanucha on Book of Odds;  entries on About.com)

I’ve chosen her words for this blog. She spells out the reason for vigilance in one’s life.

“I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had 

a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.”

~ Harriet Tubman