Epilepsy and Its Side Effects

Having been born with Epilepsy, it creates more problems than people tend to realise, in some cases they are worse than others.

I had Epilepsy from when I was 3 years old. Since then I have had difficulties in getting through education, which on the other hand made it difficult to get work.

Sometimes when I first worked it was for duration of 6 months, I was not working or may have been hospitalized for 2 months.

Eventually I got back to work in those days which lasted for between 6-8 months. In my best entire job, I worked away from home for about 5 months, then the Christmas holidays began and I was asking the personnel officer if I could also go on leave, even though it wasn’t due for another 7 months.

The personnel officer gave the green light, so when I got to my home, then I rang my parents to let them know I will be on holidays shortly.

Before going on I would like to go back on the outline of the Speedo Knitting Mills as having been the best employer in those days as on one occasion when I had a seizure it was so serious so the personnel manager Mr Garrett had taken me home to my address in Beauty Point which was quite a distance but due to the kindness of Mr Garrett his kindness put Speedo as being the best employer in those days.

When we got to my sisters house Mr Garrett went to the door and rang the bell, then he outlined to my sister as to why he drove me home from Artarmon which to my amazement showed the care and concern Mr Garrett showed and that explains the reason Speedo is regarded as the best employer in those days.

The staff at Speedo had shown a wonderful caring group who had been encouraging things to suit me best in those areas in those days and as the Sister-in-charge of the First Aid Section, she was a wonderful nature and attended to occurrences that arose in differing areas on certain occasions.

One of the marvels of the Speedo Knitting Mills was that whenever I had a seizure the Sister-in-charge was there straight away and they never tended to dismiss me because of the illness, which explains why they were regarded as the best employer in those days.

So as you can see Speedo was the best employer in those days and they are still regarded as the best employer in the Private area and Army Health Records in the Government area.

One of the wonderful things Mr Garrett did was he gave meleave for the Christmas break to be able to go and celebrate it with my family.

I spent 2 weeks with the whole entire family at that stage, then I went home with my parents to their hometown of Melbourne to which I’d become accustomed to and hadn’t lived away from home longer in the past, which made it difficult to return to the environment in Sydney.

Had I have returned I probably would have been there longer than in any other job I would have had in Australia.

Since then the picture has been dull over recent years due to the fact that I went in and out of jobs on regular occasions. It happened constantly till a few years ago when the unemployment situation got worse than ever before.

From then onwards it has been more difficult to get or hold a job, and it still is, all being due to the employment history of the past. Sometimes it was the fault of the employer.

One example is when I worked for a store in the food industry and was asked by the manager to do one job, and then whilst the manager was gone from the store the assistant manager

asked me to do another job. I didn’t do it straight away, and as soon as the manager walked in, the assistant manager complained about me, which in the end lost me the job.

Employment as you can visualize has been one of the vast problems, the reasons why are not clearly understood, in some way the employer blames me whilst in other ways I blame the employer. The solvent hasn’t been found by either group at present. On the other hand

the Federal Government has done little if anything to encourage me to work instead of having

to depend on the pension on and off.

After all it’s the Federal Government Departments responsibilities to help enable me to get a job, which in the long term, which will make more benefits, they are:

1 Enable me to be independent; 2 Reduce Social Security costs 3 Earn the Government more in taxation 4 Reduce the number of disabled people out of work; 5 Improve social justice in the Community 6 Recognize the rights of the handicapped to equal status within the economic community.

It has been an unhappy life I’ve had to go through with my family, Social Security and Department of Employment over the years, all being due to the fact that when I asked one group for help, they referred me to another and so on, till I went round all three groups. It seemed like they were playing tennis with me and enjoyed it immensely.

They could and should have been able to place me in a job but as people in society have begun to realise in 1978. All they cared about was they, as long as they had an income was all they were concerned about as well as the time to enjoy life in with other benefits.

Whereas it is about time the Australians did something about those barriers that have been there for decades, and need to be delved into more deeply to find ways and mans to overcome the barriers and to try and avoid ignorance in areas of concern some of which are; road accidents, industrial accidents, congenital abnormalities, pre-natal injury, drug addiction, alcoholism, loneliness, suicidal cases, home accidents, air accidents, sea accidents, the numbers were increasing every 20 minutes in 1978, which will increase as the population increases to every 12 minutes in the 1980s which will make more work for hospitals and their subsidies.

The areas of concern correlate to other areas the people are likely to be affected from their becoming mentally, physically, psychologically, visually, socially, and incapacitated at an increasing ratio depending on the other figures.

The increases on the other hand will make the problems more difficult for society to understand which will make it necessary to increase the educational basis to enable them to learn ways to understand new problems that become difficult to understand thereby pinpointing to the educational basis on a constant basis.

Problems arise in differing patterns on a worldwide basis and which are manipulated more frequently by those in the professional status who think they understand the problems and can overcome them.

It has been proven to be the reverse because the professional status have no insight, knowledge, or basic understandings if they did there would be fewer accidents, injuries, illnesses and impairments than there is at the present rate.

In actual fact what did the medical, nursing, social welfare and psychological fields have learnt was not from people like myself from whom they’d have a lot more to learn than they tend to realise; otherwise it will be for their best of their lives that they’ll learn things gradually and by the time they’ve learnt all, they would have learnt from those of us with insight, knowledge, experience, knowledge, understanding, and interest; their lives would (i) have come to an end or (ii) it would have been learnt too late.

One of the worst things happening in this day and age is that the doctors are too one sided and when they refer to my parents, they believe every word of what is said by both being interested at the one time.

Whereas if as I intended 12-14 years ago (1964 founding of the Victorian Bureau of Epilepsy on 15th May), the parents took it in turn to see the doctor, social worker, nurse and patients I chose, followed by me seeing them all, then the picture would be better and it would be better and it would the group to see the truth from all angles more so than they would have seen otherwise.

Among several examples I can give you is an idea how dishonest one of my father was; the reason was when I was given a check, of $2000 in May to be banked in my account, then 10 days lapsed, and suddenly I was requested to withdraw the $2000 and repay it to him by check, which in the end proves he was tax dodging and using me as the scapegoat, which on the other hand proves my point that my fathers dishonesty and there are numerous problems my father is hiding from the Government, myself and the Hospital Commission.

Another example is where Yvonne tried to commit suicide on 3/6/78 due to the fact that having been promised to get married, get a new house and car being provided for her and her sons aged from 19 to 12 years of age.

When the man turned on her cheek and decided to return to his original wife and child, she was trying to upset the mans wife in numerous ways – one was by sending her flowers from a florist in a suburb of Melbourne and charging the costs to the woman’s husband.

As time went on and he didn’t show up as he said he wouldn’t from Sunday 27th May 1978; the Yvonne got to saturation point and intended to commit suicide on the following week; yet as she was PR for Don Chipp and his Party, the whole entire family were hiding the truth from members of the Democrats who found out she had a black eye, and each time she was asked how did it happen, both Yvonne and the family told lies, which as you can see was hideous.

With the issues that arose the parents wouldn’t admit her to the Alcoholic and Drug Dependent Clinic, which is located in several Northern suburb of Melbourne.

The reason why was because she was living away from home and they claimed they weren’t responsible for her as they were for me, because the problems occurred at her place, whilst

mine occurred at my parents, which is untrue and discriminating to me; after all she was worse off by what she tried then, than I was; apart from the fact that they’d been embarrassed to have her hospitalised which would make the Democrats more aware of the type of personality she has, and by what she and the family were hiding, which as I’ve learnt doesn’t payoff, after all it was found out in some way or another in the end result.

Whereas if I do a little unpleasant thing like hitting my sister, one member of the family will call the Police and ask them to take responsibility of me and have me taken to one of the Institutions in Melbourne known as Larundel so do you see the differentiation between me and my old sister who tried to commit suicide.

In other matters the numerous members of the family help each other out when any of them have a problem, whereas I don’t.

There are times when I do things, which the others don’t know about, and I’ve done them as a surprise mainly. Whereas the others get the credit which is entirely wrong.

At times when I feel in the mood to help, it may not be much but its still something; whilst over the years I’ve done things slowly and gradually, but because I lived at home permanently, my parents expected me to do more work than the sisters, whereas if my sisters were at home they would tend to d less things than they would have done in their young days; evidence dates back to the old days when the old Yvonne for instance had a smoke in the toilet and put the cigarette butt in-between pages of books she read; at the time she was supposed to wash the dishes, in other words she ran away from what she was supposed to do.

Elly at that time was studying Architecture in later years and she had that as well the time she spent with friends as a means of getting out of the washing up and other household duties, whilst I on occasions helped my mother wash up and used to make a pot of tea at about 10.30 pm, which was primarily for my parents and at other times was also for others.

Those were the young days before the younger sister departed from home, only 6 years ago whilst the old sister left 22 years ago when she got married at a young age and lived in Sydney.

I on the other hand have remained home all those years except during the time I’ve spent overseas which accounts for 24 out of the last 30 months to April 1978.

The other point is that the family doesn’t show an interest in me and it has been like that for years, they have been found out to keep family and business concerns away from me, and it was through various ways and means I found those facts out.

Having resided with my parents most of my life I have never been encouraged to socialise in local groups, and I didn’t realise their value till I was 33 year old, since then the residence which was cut off from public transport after a certain time which made it difficult for me to go out at night, whereas when returning at night I would have to get a taxi otherwise it would be a long walk from wherever I got of the train, tram or bus, it would also be dangerous on my own likewise.

In recent years I have tried to find myself a girlfriend, but it seems hard in this day and age; I have also managed to get over the shyness which I once had which enables me to mix more easily than in the early days.

I feel sorry now that I didn’t think of socialising in my young days, but as we all should know, we sometimes learn things when it’s too late to a certain degree. Nevertheless, by our trials and tribulations we should be able to pick up later on, with two requirements being patience and perseverance.

Very few people, primarily those who have had a certain cross to carry, learn Patience and Perseverance.

Other people in the society of today tend to have a problem confronting their life cycle with being impatient and impractical for specific reasons at differing times during their life cycle, when things don’t go their way.

Whereas if I do a small mishap, my parents get frightened for several reasonsand admit me to Larundel where they think the problem will be solved, which is untrue, as having been at Larundel from as far back as 1959 on various occasions, and it has proven to be untrue; p 5

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which explains the negativeness my parents showed in my life cycle, which have been ignored, neglected and mismanaged for undue reasons till later on when having returned from my overseas travels which enabled me to learn of numerous benefits for people in my situation as well as myself.

With those bit of information they were beneficial from all forms of life and they had been put into action during part of the program of the group I and Eddie Ryan founded; which is known as “The Handicapped Peoples Collective Action Group”, where the group had certain aims to be achieved in the time ahead, one of them being putting these overseas experiences into action wherever they were best suited.