© 2009 Philippe Dubath
© 2009 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| The President’s Note | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 49 — Winter 2009 | National Meeting at Notre Dame de Lumières |
…Or how to deal with epilepsy
Affected from childhood by epilepsy, some 700,000 people are affected by it in Switzerland. The dynamic journey of Jean-François Pittet is a source of hope.
When he was a child, at school, Jean-François Pittet had absences that were not noticed. He was there, but no longer there. One day in 1978, he dropped the dictation in the middle of a sentence only to pick it up again much later. It was when he opened the notebook and discovered the dictation of which a large part was missing that the school teacher reacted. Parents. Doctor. The diagnosis finally came: epilepsy…
Thirty years later, in 2009, the same Jean-François Pittet, 44, is president of the Municipal Council of Villars-le-Terroir. He works both in IT and in the agricultural sector with his brother; he no longer has absences, and when he speaks with someone, he really speaks with someone. To get there, however, to avoid suffering his neurological illness for life - not mental, but neurological - he went through a path that resembles a big, not funny game of snakes and ladders, through squares whose painful depths he has not forgotten. Medication for years, with more or less effective effects on the disorders; a first successful operation, for the removal of a cyst in the brain; disappearance of the absences but persistence of the warning signs, the auras, these strange states between excitement and dejection.
Then back to the medication box, to the side effects box, and immense fatigue. Always medication. The seizures get worse, he even goes from “petit mal”, which is the unspectacular epilepsy, to “grand mal”, which, with its disordered gestures, its bodily torments, frightens the general public.
Then comes the episode of the hippocampus. Everything will change when this small piece of cervical structure is removed. It is in this “all white mushroom”, as Jean-François describes it with a smile, that the “short circuit” that made his life impossible occurred. The operation, successful, offers Jean-François a new birth. It is in 1999. He will take his very last pill on November 30, 2001. “Without this operation, the disease worsening over the years, I would probably have become unable to work”. The intervention has however left its mark, since the piece of brain with the pretty name of hippocampus plays an important role in memory.
“Before, I had an exceptional memory. When I was young, I recited the long poems of Victor Hugo. But I didn’t dare express my own thoughts, I was too afraid!”
After the removal of the hippocampus, he still knows Victor Hugo, but the memory of what he said and did the day before fades, his entire short-term memory fails.
“_I have personal techniques, I was able to count on the support of a neuropsychologist, I learned to get by. In any case, there is no comparison compared to before! I live _”!
Jean-François Pittet, looking towards the past, smiles: “They cut off my memory, it was the only way but, at the same time they cut off my terrible shyness.” He does not forget where he comes from. Every year, he accompanies, with the parish, the pilgrims who go to Lourdes.
But why tell his story? Because Monday is International Epilepsy Day, and for years this great athlete, who has run Sierre-Zinal and the Lausanne Marathon many times, who has cycled from Lhasa to Kathmandu, who enjoys the high mountains without being afraid of his absences, since he no longer suffers from them, this great athlete has made a habit of speaking to families to say that they must not give up. To tell those who are diagnosed that they must believe in it, that there may be solutions.
Information on the website www.epi-eclipse.ch
Philippe Dubath
| The President’s Note | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 49 — Winter 2009 | National Meeting at Notre Dame de Lumières |