Our local paper covered Nora’s 1-year seizure free anniversary! Front page of last Sunday’s paper! We’ve been local celebrities this week!

Read the story here: http://www.gazettetimes.com/news/local/high-fat-ketogenic-diet-helps–year-old-keep-seizures/article_ca7dc366-6d66-541a-8516-4e87be41c9c0.html

Photo by Amanda Cowan, Corvallis Gazette-Times

I joke that our paper loves a good human interest story more than anything else. Rivaled only by the traffic circle controversy, the plastic bag ban debate, and dog custody cases.

Joking aside, we were pleased with their coverage of Nora’s story and explaining the ketogenic diet to a wider audience. From conversations and contacts this week, I know that our story is important to tell in our community.

My goal in contacting the paper is to create awareness about the diet as an effective and doable epilepsy treatment. I think the best thing that we can do is to show other people that there is hope, and to be there to help them heal their kids. There is a big learning curve for administering this diet, but I believe in the power and dedication of parents to make it happen. By passing along our information, we can help to make a difficult thing doable and we can share the load. Our next step is to set up a support group at Doernbecher pediatrics in Portland to help other families figure out how to get started and keep it up. We are tentatively meeting with the keto-clinic staff after Nora’s next appointment–here we go!

If any other keto families out there have tips or tricks for an effective support group–from either the supporting or being-supported perspective, I would love to hear it. I feel like we have an online support group going on here and it has been so valuable to us. It’s time to pass it forward.

I’ve been crazy busy with school and work lately, but I have a few more recipes and ideas that are ready to be published–so stay tuned!