'Boundaries like fences, are not solely physical, they are also psychological. External boundaries provided by adults become internal beliefs of children' .
When one thinks of a person being disabled, images of wheelchairs, crutches and guide dogs come to mind. Some disabilities do not require special equipment and remain hidden until an idiosyncrasy of the disability suddenly emerges. One such disability is epilepsy, a functional brain disorder affecting one in two hundred people. People with obvious disabilities are allocated more public-education program funding than epileptics, whose disability emerges only occasionally. This is an injustice, and the government needs to step up its education awareness programs funding because research shows that epileptics suffer just as much discrimination in the work place and in the community as other disabled people. As a teenager, I can remember vividly being left out of invitations to parties, not being chosen for sports teams and just being ignored on account of my condition, and that is without anyone having the benefit of seeing me in a seizure. .
Epileptics act and look like any "normal" person except when a seizure occurs. Twitching limbs before a seizure, gives some epileptics enough warning time to protect themselves by shifting down to floor level before they fall. However, some sufferers, before experiencing a seizure, report smelling aromas which are unfamiliar. These signals are referred to as "auras", and are helpful to the epileptic, giving them a pre-warning of what is to come. But when the epileptic has a seizure in public, the gathering crowd often subjects the individual with the condition to the same treatment as those with constantly visible disabilities. After a seizure, the epileptic is well acquainted with the strange looks from people around them as they recover, knowing that many would not consider making them comfortable or phone a family member.
