Hi @nin
I am currently living in São Paulo, Brazil. Unfortunately, here in Brazil, there are no epilepsy centers like in the US, Brazil is behind the US in epilepsy treatments. I have already been to several doctors (psychiatrists and neurologists) since my diagnosis of epilepsy in 2019. By the start of this year, I have finally found a good epileptologist and felt very much the difference. At first, I have been diagnosed just with temporal lobe epilepsy. Sclerosis on my hippocampus I have discovered later, after reading that most people with temporal lobe epilepsy have an injury in the brain. The Epilepsy Foundation has been an excellent source of epilepsy education for me. I then asked my doctor at that time, a neurologist, to do an MRI with high definition, discovering I also had small hippocampal sclerosis. What would I have done differently after the diagnosis of my epilepsy if I could go back in time? To have been treated by an epileptologist right from the beginning, if I knew that existed. My seizures also started when I was 12 years old, but in a very mild way and with very occasional seizures. I have lived with my epilepsy for 36 years without knowing it (I am 51 years old now) and I had a normal life until I had a burnout by the end of 2017.
If you have other questions, feel free to ask.
Have a nice evening 🙂
Santosha