Alan Faneca discusses epilepsy, Steelers with Mike Tomlin

AF — “We’re in the holiday season. So, it was my freshman year of high school and I was sleeping at my great grandparents’ house on Christmas Eve and I had my first seizure, my first couple of seizures. During the night I was upset and crying and just really had no idea why, and I was kind of running around the house. Everybody is trying to calm me down, and eventually I did get back to bed. I believe I had two to three during the night. You know, you wake up and it’s Christmas morning. I just shake it off as a couple nightmares and let’s get to opening presents and having Christmas Day. All the adults around me are a little concerned. It wasn’t a normal, typical night.

“So, then, shortly thereafter we start going to all of the doctors visits and figuring things out and taking the test and come to find out I have epilepsy. So started my path of starting treatment and getting things figured out for months for the right medication that worked for me and the right amount. Kind of got me to where I am today.

When I first got the diagnosis of having epilepsy, you know, we didn’t have the internet like we had now. You couldn’t just pop open a laptop and figure away and get answers. So, my family and I, we went with a long list of questions of just basic life questions of day-to-day things, how this was going to change my life and what I needed to know or do. Once we got through all of those questions, we got to the extracurricular, the sports and the football questions and things of that nature. The doctor said it so quickly that I could keep playing football, my family and I, we looked at each other, and then we looked back at him and said, ‘You know what football is, right? It’s a bunch of guys running around with helmets on and butting up heads and stuff.’ He knew what football was and he told me to keep chasing my dream and to keep going after it, and I never asked him again. Took that and ran.

“Just kind of really attacked having it, if you will. I’ve always had a great support system that always pushed me to own it and be upfront with people. And it’s really where I kind of learned to kind of have my kind of mantra of ‘I have epilepsy but epilepsy is only part of me; it’s not who I am.’ And I learned that from my family and my friends and my coaches and teachers in those high school years.”