Epilepsy May Strike Her Down But It Won’t Strike Her Out
Lisa Patrick
Ashland Beacon
November is Epilepsy Awareness Month and a perfect time to spotlight a local youth who is determined to beat it back and continue living her life on her terms. Hayden Grace Meeks, a fifth grader at Charles Russell Elementary, has been through a lot in her life, including being diagnosed with epilepsy on Jan. 4, 2020. Although this is just something else she has had to learn to live with, she has just kept focusing on the positive things in her life and keeps on playing like her brain is not misfiring.
At the age of 10, Hayden Grace has lived through a traumatic physically abusive event by her mother’s boyfriend, her younger brother being born with a rare disease that almost took his life (but didn’t), a hormone imbalance that caused her to get regular injections to keep it under control, and the unfortunate death of her mother. While living with epilepsy is a huge deal for most children (and adults), Hayden Grace just shrugs it off as one more part of her life.
Hayden was diagnosed with Benign Childhood Epilepsy with Centrotemporal Spikes (BECTS). Most people with epilepsy have misfires on one side of their brain, so their brain reroutes messages around the misfires. Hayden Grace’s brain misfires on both sides, so her brain has difficulty rerouting information.
Like most epileptics, Hayden Grace has severe ADHD and anxiety. This can cause problems in her relationships with other children her age which can sometimes make both of these conditions worse. Some of her peers call her names, and some of them even curse at her because she’s different from them. Hayden Grace wants everyone to know that she is “not weird or stupid,” she just needs more time and assistance to process her work.
Hayden Grace is “not that different from her peers after all,” stated her “Gammy,” Lory Scarberry, whom Hayden lives with. She loves YouTube, Harry Potter, cooking, softball, wrestling, volleyball, Legos, camping, music, helping others, and, “most of all,” her brother, Cameron.
Hayden Grace usually plays first base for her softball team, and she is always holding her hand out to high-five every runner who gets on base for both her regular team and her travel team. “Sometimes, I’ll look over and she is hugging the runner from the other team like we aren’t in a competition here,” said her “Poppy,” Butch Scarberry, who coaches her softball team. She is always rooting for everyone to do well.
Her past experiences have made her uniquely empathic. If a child is distressed, Hayden Grace is the first one there to try to offer comfort. During a visit to Bob Evans Farm Fest, she was in the hay maze when she heard a young girl crying. She went through the entire maze until she found the toddler crying because she had gotten separated from her brother and was lost. While the parents had sent the brother back in to look for her and were frantically searching through the ropes trying to figure out where their child was, Hayden Grace exited the maze holding the little girl’s hand and assuring her that it was going to be alright because she would find her brother and her parents for her. She always wants to help find a solution for anyone who is hurt or in need of a little help.
On the wrestling mat, “Hayden is a better coach than she is a wrestler,” said Lory Scarberry. She has learned all of the fundamentals growing up with Butch Scarberry, the head coach for Ashland High School’s Wrestling Team. But, she has problems with executing those moves when she is on the mat herself. However, she is always at mat-side to help support her teammates and even the high school wrestlers. Her Poppy doesn’t dare go to a practice or meet without Hayden Grace unless she’s sick. It would upset her too much to miss out on the action.
Hayden’s epilepsy is mostly controlled by medication but every now and then, she still suffers from nighttime seizures. It usually starts with a headache the day before and either the inability to focus or focusing entirely too hard on a certain item, such as staring at her softball bat for minutes at a time when she doesn’t usually pay much attention to the bat itself at all. She just swings it around like the rest of the softball players. Because her seizures happen at night, Scarberry has a nanny cam set up in her bedroom so that she will always have access to help if she needs it.
As Hayden grows, her family is hopeful that she may outgrow her epilepsy entirely, research will produce a cure, or, at the very least, it will continue to be mostly controlled by medication. In the meantime, she will still be playing softball, improving her volleyball game, wrestling with her friends, camping and playing with her little brother, helping cook dinner, waving her wand around like she’s Hermione, and doing everything she can to live her best life possible.