BRINLEE'S STORY

Brinlee declined too much before we tried Keto and we came really close to entirely losing the daughter we knew.  We wish we would have tried Keto earlier.  Our hope is that Brinlee's story will inspire others before they get too far along the path that we took.
Brinlee suddenly started having seizures around 5 years old.  We started Keppra and she was seizure free for about 1-1/2 years which caused us to put great faith in medication.
Around 7 years old, out of nowhere, she started having seizures again so the doctors wanted to try different medications.  Given the success we had with Keppra, we had no argument with that and, at that time, we didn't know any better.
For about 2 years we tried different medications; but every time we tried a new medication, Brinlee's seizures would change and the side effects were awful.  Cognitive decline, disturbing thoughts, explosive anger, loss of all that wonderful personality, etc.  We didn't realize it at the time but we were slowly losing the child we knew, not to epilepsy but to the medications.
With the last medication we tried, she started having drop seizures during the day.  It would be an instantaneous drop to the ground, no warning at all.  Even if you were standing next to her holding her hand, she would drop and if you weren't holding her hand tight, you'd lose the grip.
We consulted with Brinlee's epileptologist but he just wanted to increase the dose saying what we were witnessing shouldn't be happening.  We trusted him and went up in dosage; but it continued to get worse.
At that point we were done.  Brinlee's epileptologist still wanted to keep increasing the dosage though.  We had to argue with him to convince him to give us a weaning schedule; and immediately after we started coming off the medication, Brinlee started improving.
It was then that we lost all faith in medication and started thinking about other alternatives.  On our own, we started with the Modified Atkins Diet (MAD) on a 2:1 fat to carb ratio and saw immediate results, subtle results but clear results; and started considering weaning off her other two meds.
Brinlee's epileptologist gave us a weaning schedule for the second medication and again Brinlee started improving.  This gave us huge hopes for Keto.  We continued with MAD but increased her fat to carb ratio from 2:1 to 3:1.
Brinlee was still having seizures; but she was having less of the detrimental seizures and the side effects were dwindling as we took the meds away.  Keto provided the same results, or better, without the devastating side-effects of medications.  We were getting our daughter back.
The last hurdle was Brinlee's last medication and again we had to fight the doctor to give us a weaning schedule.
Brinlee only has night time seizures now, but substantially fewer (0-2, with 0 being a frequent occurrence); and without all the medications, she sleeps better and recovers much quicker.  She's happy, she's learning, she does normal kids things, and we have real hope of putting the worst of epilepsy behind us.
No one ever told us about the Keto diet as an option and when we asked the doctors about it early on, they said it would stunt her development.
In hindsight, the medications did way worse than Keto could ever do and the seizures do way less damage than the medications.  We were constantly afraid of the seizures but we should've been more afraid of the medications.
We wish we would have read some of the stories we're seeing now about how successful Keto can be and how detrimental medications can be.
Keto isn't easy and it takes several months to really figure out how to integrate it into your lifestyle and to see results; but I can't describe how much it has changed our lives for the better.  We were hitting deep, depressing lows as a family; and Keto pulled us out of the depths and gave us hope.