Since her diagnosis and successful treatment for epilepsy, Cailin Stroyke has done some amazing things.
From returning to her straight-A academic career to traveling to Washington, D.C., on behalf of the Epilepsy Foundation, to being honored at a gala reception hosted by UCLA, the 15-year-old from Manhattan Beach has had a whirlwind 18 months since surgeons removed about an eighth of her brain.
But atthis SundaysWalk/Run To End Epilepsy, a fundraiser for the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Los Angeles held at the Rose Bowl, she is helping take on quite a task: Bridging the gap between UCLA and USC less than a week before their annual football game.
A sophomore at Marymount High School, Cailin is the youngest of three children in a USC family. But her diagnosis and treatment for the complex partial seizures that started when she was a sixth-grader took place at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood.
Cailins mom said she realized something was amiss when her daughter, then a student at Manhattan Beach Middle School, seemed to zone out one day at the gym while trying on a volleyball jacket.
They are kind of like staring spells, her mom said. I used to describe them to other people as its like she got unplugged from her computer, and then after 30 seconds, 45 seconds, she gets plugged back in and now you go through this reboot period, which is 15 to 20 minutes of her going from Where am I, what just happened? to slowly her body would adjust.
The trouble was in middle school she would have them in classrooms and no one would notice because if you are just sitting at a desk, and this unpluggedness is happening, Colleen said. So very easy to miss. In fact, she could have been having them the whole year prior and we just didnt notice. It took that one time that I was right in front of her right when it was happening and she was non-responsive.
As she began going through the regimen of medication and testing, Cailin would have as many as five to 10 of these episodes a day, and the time it took to recover from each one had a significant impact.
It was super-frustrating, but my teachers were super-understanding, so they definitely were accommodating, Cailin said. Youd basically miss a whole period if you had one.
Surgery is not a typical option for most people with epilepsy, she and her mother said, because the trigger is not usually in one particular part of the brain.
Read more here:
Fighting On: Manhattan Beach teen beats epilepsy with more than a little Bruin help