Jet's Dream

Jet's Dream

Jet is our great 16 year old son. He wants to go to the Air Force Academy, become an aerospace engineer, a pilot, then an astronaut. His grades are ok in high school, but there's a problem: he's had seizures. He's had about 5 seizures since November, 2011. The Air Force Academy says that they don't allow people into their academy who've had seizures except for feral seizures. In fact, the military won't allow anyone to join who've had seizures.

It seems like they're saying that epilepsy from a genetic cause is dangerous since you could have a seizure at any time, which is unacceptable, especially if you're flying an aircraft. However, if your seizures were from high fevers, you'll probably not have another one. I think Jet's seizures are similar. He's shown that they're triggered by elements in his environment and he can focus and cause them to stop. He feels that, even without the aid of seizure medication, he can sense a seizure coming on, focus, and force the seizure to stop. This is contrary to genetically-caused epilepsy. His is more like the seizures caused by certain video games in certain children.

His doctor said that they'll have him seen by a psychologist. We're waiting to get an appointment.

Well, that didn't work. He saw Dr. Hinton, a psychiatrist, who didn't want to test him for environmentally-caused seizures, but said that Jet has epilepsy and there's nothing he's going to do. Then he recommended we see a psychologist. Actually, this is my mistake, since Dr. Harding, Jet's Pediatric doctor, told us that would happen, and that we should see a psychologist first.

20130826 Jet said he received an email from an Air Force recruiter that says that the new rule for whether having had seizures is a disqualification is that if a doctor indicates what the cause of the seizures was, Jet could still qualify. Still, I'm having trouble getting doctors to evaluate Jet to determine that cause. Dr. Harding said she had the same problem with her son. I wonder if she can't get cooperation if I can. I need to get that email from Jet (from the Air Force recruiter) so I'll have her statement about the new opportunity and her email address.