HOPE WITHIN ME

A journal of debut author Valencia’s emotional 10-year struggle with epilepsy.

In 2010, at the age of 14, the author was about to enter his freshman year in high school. He’d attended a small, private Christian school all his life, so it was his first venture into California’s public school system, and he was looking forward to singing in the new school’s choir. Then he experienced his first seizure—just a few seconds of lost time, followed by great exhaustion. He was soon diagnosed with epilepsy and prescribed an assortment of anti-seizure drugs, which made him sleepy and agitated, by turns, and made it difficult for him to concentrate; meanwhile, the seizures continued. It would take his parents several months to obtain approval form their health-insurance company to transfer him to the care of a pediatric neurologist, who fine-tuned his diagnosis. Valencia suffered from a specific form of epilepsy—a disorder now known as focal onset impaired awareness seizures—which led to years of complicated drug regimens, some moderately successful, others less so. Despite his challenges, Valencia performed well academically and musically in high school, college, and graduate school; the author currently sings with a professional choir and teaches music. The book opens with a comprehensive primer on the varieties of seizure disorders, and although some readers are likely to skim over parts of this, others will find it highly informative. The ensuing memoir is hampered by some awkward, choppy sentence construction: “Little did I know how that beach trip changed the course of my life as I lived with Epilepsy. Never to put my feet into the ocean again. Where would have been somewhere I once loved to go; I now dreaded.” For the most part, though, Valencia’s conversational prose poignantly communicates his emotional pain when other people witnessed his seizures. It also effectively relates his despair that he might never live a normal life, as well as his terror in 2020 as he lay in an operating room before brain surgery. Most especially, however, it gets across his indomitable spirit.

An inspirational and enlightening guide, despite some unwieldy prose.