Walk for a Cure focuses on epilepsy
Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter
Students at Wheatland Elementary School spent an afternoon learning more about epilepsy before heading outside to Walk for a Cure. The afternoon began with a 45-minute presentation by Crashman, also known as Bill Melathopolous, a representative from the Epilepsy Foundation of Calgary. The foundation is a non-profit organization that provides awareness and support to people.
“When I first started doing this we were trying to come up with different titles, and the thing that I noticed is we’re kind of living in a comic book age so I kind of thought why not create a comic book character because kids really identify with that,” said Melathopolous.
“Why Crashman? Because at one time it was actually considered the falling sickness so that’s why I combined in my story, incidences of me crashing into stuff. So I try to combine the two and create this superhero guy, and the more I dress it up then the kids kind of get more involved with it.”
“Every year we do a Walk for a Cure and this year we did epilepsy,” said gym teacher and organizer Susan Shearer.
“The rule of thumb is that someone in our school population has to be affected by the illness, so there are four kids in our school with epilepsy.”
Elizabeth Bertram, also a representative from the foundation, said epilepsy was not something that was talked about often, and now it is time to talk about it and give information to help eliminate some of the fear.
“The main thing is just to bring the awareness to everyone. So bring the epilepsy out of its own little shadow. It’s always been associated with fear, and a lot of misconceptions and just wholly in a myth. It was always shrouded with a lot negativity and stigma,” said Bertram.
“The education is the first step to bring epilepsy into the 21st century. Give the information, if someone has epilepsy they should not feel isolated, should not feel rejected or fearful to go to school and associate it with people.”
Melathopolous has epilepsy and said for years it was never really talked about and the foundation realized that wasn’t helping with anything.
“If you aren’t talking about it, how can you help and inform people?,” said Melathopolous.
Over two per cent of the world’s population is affected by epilepsy. Epilepsy is a brain disorder, which causes seizures of any type, and can happen without any cause. It can affect people of any age, and is most commonly found in children. It can be scary when someone drops into a seizure in front of you, but there are things that can be done to make it as safe as possible for him or her. To find tips on what to do in a situation where someone is having a seizure go to, www.epilepsycalgary.com and click on First Aid for Seizures on the left hand side bar.