From 25 seizures to 0: the daily life of an epileptic from Montreal has changed

A Montreal man’s daily life changed completely two years ago thanks to intracranial electrode treatment that stopped his epileptic seizures.

Luis Navarro, whose epilepsy began when he was 18, could suffer up to 25 seizures a day.

“My daily life is actually filled with fear, I left the house to go to work or go to school and I lived in fear, I didn’t know if one day I would end up in hospital when I left the house,” he told TVA Nouvelles.

Some of his attacks resulted in him being absent, leaving him unable to carry on a conversation.

“What panicked me the most was the uncertainty I felt every day, I didn’t know what was going to happen in my daily life and I didn’t know if I’d be coming home in the evening,” he admitted.

His seizures became more and more frequent, and his convulsions became more and more intense; medications did not help. In addition, Mr. Navarro had lost his job in recent years, went outside very little, and was no longer physically active.

The Neuro team (Hospital of the Montreal Neurological Institute) took care of him and two years ago decided to implant intracranial electrodes against epilepsy, and since then there have been no more seizures.

“There are actually many causes of epilepsy, sometimes you can be born with a malformation, such as a fold of the brain that forms differently, and we don’t always know why, but it can appear later in life, as in the case of Mr. Navarro. The seizures started around age 18,” explained Dr. Raluca Pana, a neurologist and epileptologist at The Neuro.

In Canada, approximately 300,000 people have epilepsy.