career Archives - Epilepsy Dad

Neurodefender: Video Games and Epilepsy

My first video game console was an Atari 2600 that my sister and I received for Christmas when I was eight.¹ It was magical to toggle the switchbox and have an arcade on my television screen. Within a few months, I had a collection of cartridges. Pitfall, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong. I even had that horrible E.T. game. But Space Invaders was my favorite game, and my mother’s boss and I had a friendly competition every time we visited his family.

I usually won.

As I got older, I became very interested in computers. My first computer was a Mattel (yes, that Mattel) Aquarius, one of the shortest-lived computers ever to go to market. It had a Tron game that I played constantly, even though I had never seen the movie. But it was the ability to program on the Aquarius that got me hooked and, for a long time, my world revolved around computers and my gaming followed suit.

My first online games were on a computer. That was back before there were high-powered consoles connected to the internet. I’m talking the days of dial-up modems. I would spend hours playing an air combat game with a classmate, but I was obsessed with the text-based fantasy role playing game Gemstone on GEnie, an early online service. It was a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that connected people across the country in a virtual world. Eventually, I moved on to more graphical games like the World of Warcraft, but the ability to connect with other people in these worlds was life-changing and even turned into friendships in the real world. One of my groomsmen at my wedding was someone whom I had originally met in an online game.

My son developed a love for video games at an early age. We had a Wii and loved to play baseball and, especially, bowling. I have videos of him running circles around the house after getting a strike, a huge smile on his face emitting an excited giggle.

As he got older, we began to play video games together, especially sport games like hockey. We’d adjust the settings to give him an edge, and I’d occasionally have to pull my goalie and allow him to score to keep the game close, but it was a fun way to spend time together doing something that we both enjoyed.

Eventually, of course, I stopped pulling my goalie and boosting his settings because he got better. Today, he wins more games than me. The grasshopper has become the teacher. And we’ve expanded to other games. We finished the Halo series, one of my all-time favorites. We played MarioKart every night during the pandemic to get three stars on every course. Today, we play Fortnite and Rocket League together, with an occasional session of Minecraft mixed in.

But I’m not the only one he plays with. This era of powerful PCs and consoles with fast internet has opened up the world and allowed him to play with his friends. He has a friend in Connecticut who plays a baseball video game with him. And he hops on Fortnite after school to play with a few of his friends. Through them, he’s met other friends and he has a little network of gamers. Especially over the summer, it’s helped him stay connected as many families travel and it’s been harder to connect with summer schedules.

In this world of gamers streaming on platforms like Twitch, he has decided that it is the career he wants to pursue. Whether or not that is a viable path for him, it has been a great way for him to explore many aspects of a traditional career: schedules, consistency, marketing, and engagement. He learns by watching other streamers and then practices engaging with his audience, describing his actions and thought process as he navigates a challenge. He loves to teach the “noobs”² how to get started and basic tactics and tips.

As a technologist and a gamer, it’s been fascinating to see how far gaming technology has come. For my son, it’s become a way to connect, express himself, and find his place in a world that hasn’t always made that easy. Watching him game, teach, laugh, and grow through this medium is beyond anything I could have imagined.

If you want to see what he’s building—and maybe learn a thing or two yourself—you can check out his Twitch stream here: @neurodefender.

Game on.

Crazy side note, when the Atari 2600 was introduced, it cost $190, equivalent to paying $990 in 2024! ↩︎
Slang for a newbie—someone who is inexperienced or new to a particular activity, especially in gaming or online communities. ↩︎

Walking Through The Mud

I’ve been having a hard time finding the motivation to write lately. The thoughts in my head and the words on the page all seem the same as they have been for the past few months. The past few years.

My son isn’t better. He’s still seizing. He’s still limited. He’s still heavily medicated. We’re still dealing with his school and trying to get him an education.

Everything is harder than it should be.

It feels like I’m walking through mud. Every step takes extra effort. Every step requires my full attention. I need to push my hands through the mud to search for my leg that is trapped in the muck. When I find it, I have to wrap my hands around it and pull it towards the surface. The mud resists, not wanting to let go. Even as my leg reaches the surface, the weight of the mud clinging to my legs and shoes threaten to pull it back down. It leaves me unbalanced. Even though it is only inches in front of where I started, I’m forced to push my foot back through the mud to the ground underneath. Even though I know it means that I will have to struggle for my next step, it’s the only way to find temporary stability. Otherwise, I risk falling over and being fully consumed.

The struggle reveals itself everywhere.

Parenting is harder.

There are fewer right answers. There is more uncertainty. There is more acceptance of things that no parent of a 9-year old should have to accept.

Marriage is harder.

We’re in the same stressful, relentless situation watching our son struggle and seizure, but we have different perspectives and have different needs. We’re both trying to be there for our son but we go at different paces and we aren’t always within reach of one another.

Work is harder.

It’s hard to go to work after endless sleepless nights. It’s hard to concentrate on the work when the mind wants to worry about an upcoming surgery or the handful of seizures he had that morning.

Friendship is harder because we’re so focused on the things we can’t afford to ignore that we ignore the relationships we need. Finances are harder because of the mounting costs of medical care, nanny care and tutoring. Diet and exercise are harder because we’re always so tired and pressed for time and it’s just easier to order something from the couch.

But like many families in our situation, we continue to move forward. We keep taking labored steps towards a destination that we can’t see. Because where we are isn’t where we want to be. Because we hope we are heading in the right direction. Because there is no other choice.

The mud is unforgiving, but in those moments of brief stability in between each step, I sometimes catch a glimpse of something wonderful. The struggle has given us gifts. I am a better parent to my son because I can’t take a moment for granted. I am a better partner and friend to my wife because we know what it is like to truly need and love another. And I have brought my whole self in to work and been surrounded by people who accept and care about me. We found understanding friends. And we have learned the value of trying to live the best life we can with what we have.

It’s not always easy to see these gifts when I’m stuck in the mud. It’s difficult to be motivated when everything feels harder than it should be. But I’m doing my best to keep moving. I’m doing my best to learn and to grow and to be a good father, and husband, and friend. Because, really, there is no other choice.

“The lotus flower blooms most beautifully from the deepest and thickest mud.” ~Buddhist Proverb

The Internet Is Not A Doctor

My son’s epilepsy diagnosis came with words that I didn’t know. Status epilepticus. Refractory. Subclinical. I had a lot of questions about these words and what they meant for my son, so I turned to the same place I always turn when I have complicated medical questions.

The Internet.

Sure, our doctor would also have been a good source since, usually, she is the one using the foreign words. But being in the doctor’s office after a long exam and a long day is overwhelming, and being a web-savvy-engineer-type, the Internet is my happy place. Besides, nothing bad every happens on the Internet.

Turns out, that’s not true.

I’m one of those people who search for symptoms on WebMD, the place where a stuffy noise quickly escalates from common cold to incurable cancer.

Searching for the words surrounding my son’s diagnosis quickly leads, after a few clicks, to truly terrible conditions, none of which could my son possible have. But the seed of despair gets planted and, after a few more clicks, somehow his epilepsy also gave me an incurable disease. I don’t (as far as I know) have a disease, but I do have cyberchondria (one of my new, favorite words).

Hello, Internet, my old friend. I’ve come to search WebMD again.
~ Simon and Garfunkel (98% sure)

Once I was able to tear myself away from WebMD, I pulled up Google. I had more questions that weren’t related to solving the riddle about why my son had epilepsy but, instead, were about what his life would be like with epilepsy. Since he was a baby, he wanted to be a hockey player. I searched for “hockey players with epilepsy”.

The results that came back were not promising. Wait, I thought, can he even play hockey with epilepsy? Another Google search.

More unsatisfying answers just led to more questions. Soon I found myself sucked down another rabbit hole, this one less about clarifying a diagnosis and more about what type of possible future my son would have, even before we knew enough to even guess at what his future would be like. Looking at my browser history, it revealed a pattern of creating limitations in my head about what my son could ever hope to accomplish. Worse, I was arming myself with information that I could use to project those same limitations on to him, which is the opposite of what my search was meant to achieve.

The Internet is an amazing tool. It has the power to connect people, to share information, and maybe one day to help find a cure for epilepsy. It can inform patients and parents afflicted with a condition and provide a common vocabulary for the exchange of ideas. But it can just as easily overwhelm and do more harm than good, particularly with a new diagnosis and especially when the cause of the condition is still unknown.

My excursion to the dark side of the Internet left me with these two thoughts that I try to remember when I find myself lost on the information superhighway.

The Internet is not a doctor.

In the future, everything is possible.