Beau’ s Story

1 in 10 people will have a seizure in their lifetime, according to EFN. 1 in 26 will be diagnosed with epilepsy.
One of those people is 5-year-old Beau Meysenburg. If you hang around Beau for just a few minutes, you'll quickly learn "he absolutely loves anything and everything baseball," according to his mother Catelyn. But Beau is used to curveballs.

"Beau actually at birth had some complications shortly after birth and we found out at four days of life, that he had a stroke and was having seizures as a baby," Catelyn said.

For years, it looked like his seizures stopped.

"Last September, he woke up one morning and his face had looked really droopy again and he couldn't balance or stand or really talk to us so we knew something was wrong and so we rushed to the ER that morning," Catelyn told KETV Newswatch 7.

Catelyn and her husband Nick learned that what Beau suffered from was a seizure caused by a rare form of epilepsy, continuous spikes and waves during sleep also known as CSWS.

"Unfortunately, he has a form of epilepsy that ended up being drug-resistant," Catelyn said.

By the end of May, Beau had two surgeries.

"While there was a level of comfort going forward, there was always that element of the unknown," Nick said.

A follow-up EEG in July showed that Beau didn't have any seizures or any seizure activity. Beau's parents are grateful for the Epilepsy Foundation of Nebraska which helped them find the team that cared for Beau. But that's not all the organization did.

"We were able to provide seizure first aid training for the daycare," said Heather Bernard, the executive director of the Epilepsy Foundation of Nebraska.

Bernard said they can provide seizure training to anyone who needs it.

"You can do on-demand online, we can come and do a live training or we have live virtual trainings," she said.

Part of that training is knowing that not all seizures are visible, like Tonic Clonic, formerly known as Grand Mal.

"They can be staring off into space, or like a mouth movement, finger tapping, twitching," Bernard said.

It's something Catleyn and Nick are glad they now know.

"Had I not reached out to them and got some guidance along the way, I don't know that we would be where we are today," Catelyn said.