Purple Caffe Fife

We are delighted to tell you about one of our members, who spent Purple Day raising money for Epilepsy Scotland, to help raise awareness about the condition.

Christina Hill, from St Andrews, told us a little more about why epilepsy is so close to her heart.

My husband and I have three children including our eldest daughter, Stephanie, who attends Canongate Primary School, St Andrews.

Stephanie was diagnosed with Partial Focal Epilepsy at the age of 7. She has seizures day and night. From this point of diagnosis, Stephanie had two years been seizure free with medication and was close to having the all clear, but unfortunately Stephanie’s seizures returned.

After many trials of different medications, Stephanie’s seizures were unable to be controlled. We were given hope by health professionals at the time that Stephanie was able to be considered for Neurosurgery to remove part of her brain that was causing her Epilepsy. In January last year Stephanie underwent two Neurosurgery operations at Edinburgh Sick Kids. Unfortunately they were unable to remove all of the part that was believed to be causing her seizures as this would cause her permanent paralysis. Over a year past now, unfortunately the operation has not been a success. Stephanie continues to have seizures but now has added problems with her mobility and speech. As a family we are now back to square one. Stephanie has had to start back at the beginning now and she is due to go back into hospital for video monitoring.

Despite all of this Stephanie continues to take things in her stride and not take life to seriously. She is our inspiration! Raising funds for people with Epilepsy as parents is our way of having the feeling that we are doing something to help. Stephanie wanted to because she doesn’t want people to suffer in silence like she has anymore! She’s our hero!

So the family set about organising a fundraising event for Purple Day.  Christina explains more: