Mediocre Representation Alert!
That’s right, there is an instance of epilepsy being represented in pop culture (several years ago) that I’ve just learned about, and the character neither dies nor turns out to be evil. They have absence seizures, not Tonic/clonics.
Now begins the mediocre part: It was in Grey’s Anatomy, Season 1 Ep. 8.
Needless to say, here there be spoilers.
I hadn’t ever seen more than maybe one episode of GA, but as I rapidly discovered, it is a “how not to” guide for medical practitioners everywhere. These guys talk about their sex life within full view of the public, discuss private medical information in the hallways, and regularly fail to do the most basic things a doctor should do before any medical procedure- like getting informed consent from the patient and their family.
Like, I knew it was a medical drama and not an actual depiction of how hospitals work, but jesus. Also, every man there should be taken out and mailed to Siberia in their underpants. Except maybe the Black one. All the white dudes.
That said, the epileptic patient!
So there’s a guy who was transferred from the psych ward with delusions that he was psychic, because he appeared to be having absence seizures. They test him, and he was clearly having seizures, due to a thing in his brain that was due to rupture any minute. It was near the language center (roughly where mine is- the temporal lobe) and needed urgent operation.
Twist! He actually is psychic!
Which like... *sigh* I have so many feelings about. Dude’s concerned that after they operate, his visions will go away and he’ll be psy-negative.
At this point I semi-yelled at the TV, “That’s fine! You’ll establish an identity outside of just being a psychic! That’s healthy!”
However, the doctor says, “Maybe your visions aren’t tied to the seizures.” Which like, SO NOT THE POINT. The point is, he has epilepsy and it’s caused by this thing (an acronym) that’s about to kill him, and it’s in a part of his brain that’s pretty essential, and my seizures are considered inoperable because of where they are, so I was fully expecting his to be too.
*double sigh*
No friends, this was Grey’s Anatomy. Sending Trelawney home with a bottle of meds and a “get well soon!” would never work.
They operate, take out the whatever, and by the end of the episode we see that not only is he still psychic, but he could still tell Kristin Heigl the secret missing ingredient in her brownie recipe. Immediately after the operation.
Head’s bandaged up, he’s still laying in his hospital bed, but he’s blinking and turning his head, and SPEAKING JUST FINE!
I didn’t exactly expect greatness, but it made me really mad that the one time, ONE TIME I get to see my kind of epilepsy on screen, it’s quickly and easily cured without negatively impacting anything else in his life.
They didn’t have to do an invasive EEG (the one that’s pretty much mandatory before epilepsy surgery); they didn’t try medication first; their first step was jumping into brain surgery, and we never even saw a neurologist called in. The patient’s only worry was not, “Will I be able to walk or speak or live on my own?” It was, “But will I still be psychic?”
Which felt like a devaluation of our experiences as epileptics. I’m not sure if it’s worse than no representation, having the treatment be so lickety-split and worry-free. It certainly felt like an insult.
Especially because epilepsy was seen as a divine gift or curse, or conflated with psychic abilities so much in the past. And people were either celebrated or murdered for it. And this episode just... makes it cute. Like turning Bastet into a kitten that wees the floor.
I’d be angrier, but honestly I’m just too tired.
