“Helping Karen took a year. We would reexamine the thoughts she recorded in her journal. I challenged her to do things. At the start, she was tired all the time, had no energy, wanted only to sleep. We wondered if this was medication, but it probably was depression. Karen enjoyed athletics but had given them up because of her epilepsy and her school problems. We got her involved in just one sport and watched her energy level increase. When she found she could participate despite her epilepsy, things began to go better.”Initially Karen was having seizures every few months. With medication adjustment (and as she got older) she would go for almost a year without a seizure. It seemed as if she’d almost made it; our state then required a person to be seizure-free for one year to get a driver’s license. The rug was pulled out from under her each time. But, through counseling, she had become a stronger person and was able to deal with the recurrence of seizures. With each recurrence she was, of course, disappointed and angry, but most of all she was determined. Most of those recurrences happened when she had tested the limits of how little sleep she could exist on, of how much she could drink, or of how long she could miss her medication. Gradually she learned those limits and that the seizures and the driving were under her control. With each of these recurrences, she would come back to see the doctor and to see me. She would be angry and extremely upset, but I could support her. I never made light of her problems, and that is very important. What may seem to be small problems to the counselor and possibly to the parents can be big problems to the teenager.”*222\208\8*