CHARLOTTE — Emery Guenther says her first seizure happened on the way home from school in 2021, at 10 years old.
“It was kind of like I had a firework in my pocket, and I didn’t know when or where it was going to go off, so it was very scary because of that,” Guenther told Channel 9’s Gina Esposito.
Now 15, her experience with an epilepsy diagnosis is told through a book she wrote, called “Sky’s Strength.”
“I decided to write a book because I was feeling very isolated when I was first diagnosed, and I was having a hard time sharing my ‘secret’ with my friends because I thought they would treat me differently because I had epilepsy. And during this time, I was sharing with my teacher that I couldn’t find my information on epilepsy at all,” Guenther said.
In the children’s book, the main character, Sky, mirrors Guenther’s real-life experiences, but through watercolor.
Guenther read a passage from the book, saying: “The next test was an EEG, which showed the activity of my brain. I thought it was pretty cool having a long rainbow wire. We tried to rhyme in the book, which is pretty fun.”
There are also tools that can help others.
“We have a page that is the calm-down strategies in her...