By Dennis Fischman

In 2019, Laura Beretsky (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/46712004.Laura_Beretsky) was filling out a job application, and she had to decide whether to check the box for people with disabilities.

Laura had had epilepsy for years, and in 2014, she had undergone two brain surgeries to put her seizures in the rearview mirror. She could have left that disability box unchecked: to avoid explanations and escape the stigma that her new employer might attach to people like her. She had reason enough to choose silence. A previous employer had downgraded her work evaluation and essentially forced her out of her job after observing her having epileptic seizures in the workplace.

But Laura decided to go public about it. She got the job.

Seizing Control: Managing Epilepsy and Others’ Reactions to It
By Laura Beretsky
Haley’s, 2024, 197 pages

This book is a continuation of the courageous decision to speak out about “epilepsy and others’ reactions to it” (as the subtitle of the book proclaims). It is a public service to those of us who know little about the disease AND to those who have gone through it.

Read this book and you will learn about the disease, the diagnosis, the treatment, and the personal care that recovery from surgery required. You will also get a visceral sense of what it feels like to know a seizure is coming on.

You’ll go through Laura’s process of making difficult choices that not everyone in her life (medical advisers or family members) agreed with, and in some cases, never knowing whether they were the right choices or not. You’ll find out a bit about what it was like to be her husband and her children going through these experiences without having a choice in the matter: she is crystal clear about how difficult that was for all of them.

You will also find out what people did to support Laura that wasn’t helpful, and the things that definitely were, and she will point you toward places you can go for more information and/or to get involved in advocacy for people with disabilities.

Full disclosure: I know Laura as a fellow resident of Somerville, MA, and as a former member of the Somerville Grant Writers and Fundraisers Group. We had mostly fallen out of touch before the events described in this book, however, so her story was all new to me. What I did recognize was her voice: wry, smart, honest, troubled by troubling things and cheered by cheerful news, and dedicated to making a better world.

Dennis Fischman is a member of the Somerville Public Library’s Mystery Book Club and an inveterate reader.