Four years ago on Halloween, Sam Skidmore suffered a seizure at work at the U.S. Coast Guard base in Jacksonville, Fla. Colleagues found him unconscious, sprawled on the floor.
A series of medical tests followed — including CAT scans and a spinal tap — so doctors could try to piece together what had happened. Eventually, a neurologist told the aviation mechanic that he had epilepsy.
The news stunned Skidmore. His military career was over. He couldn't be part of a helicopter flight crew ever again.
And the epilepsy episodes became more frequent, striking first at night, and soon also during the day.
"I usually didn't fall out. They were partial seizures where I could be talking to you. I could stand still but I wouldn't know what was going on around me," Skidmore said.
For nearly two years, he couldn't drive or be left alone with his young daughters.
When three medications failed to help, he chose a more fateful course: surgery to remove parts of his brain.
Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that affects about 2 million people in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Brain removal procedures are considered a last resort, but studies show that the patients have up to a 90 percent success rate at five years.
In Skidmore's surgery, doctors took a portion of the frontal lobes of his brain. They also split the lobes of his brain and scraped away another area that was thought to be causing the seizures.
By all measures, the surgery brought excellent results, Skidmore said. He continues to take medication and hasn't had a seizure since 2010.
Seven days after the brain surgery, Skidmore and wife Christin packed up and headed to Mobile, where she had family. Within a week, she had a job and he had applied to the nursing school at the University of South Alabama.
His physicians warned Sam Skidmore to take it easy, his wife said. "The doctor said don't jump into something. It takes two to five years for your brain to heal."
Undaunted, Sam was soon immersed in nursing studies at USA. On Friday, two years to the day after the right temporal partial lobectomy, he graduated.
Sam Skidmore grew up in Milton, Fla., and joined the Coast Guard in May 2000 when he was 19. After boot camp in New Jersey, he spent time stationed in Mobile and later Puerto Rico before shipping off to Jacksonville.
In 2002, he began training to become an aviation mechanic, someone who joins the flight crew on rescue missions, among other duties. He and Christin were married in 2003.
As he seeks a nursing job in the Mobile area, he said he'd like to "do the most good for the most people."
Skidmore said he is trusting God to lead him in the right direction: "I just keep following along. For right now, I would like to work with people who deal with neurological problems."
Friday's graduation at the USA Mitchell Center was a family affair for Skidmore. Watching were Christin, who works at UMS-Wright, and their daughters, Duffie, 3, and Nancy, 5.
"It's very emotional, because it's the two-year anniversary of the brain surgery," Christin Skidmore said. "I'm so proud of him that he's come so far."
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