"We laughed which is something we never expected to do that day we laughed as we turned each new page of the notebook. We sat outside a pub after Matthew's funeral and read memories of Matt from his friends and work colleagues. There was a lack of the usual solemn formality in the messages; ˜You smooth baldy', 'No I don't look gay!' and the girl who genuinely believed Matt was descended from aristocracy (I can see Matt telling her with a straight face).
The book confirmed what we all knew; Matt was very funny, open, intelligent and irreplaceable. No one even mentioned the word epilepsy in the book because it was never a big part of Matt's life. He just got on with things with his relentless energy, whether it was his music, his fanzine, or his web site (www.hardcorenoise.com).
Matthew was 15 when his early morning seizures started. They began shortly after his best friend was killed in a car accident and although there's no proof that the two events were linked, the coincidence is very strong. The epilepsy never slowed him down, he toured with his band Beggars Opera, got drunk, had girlfriends and did all the things most teenagers do. At nineteen he stopped taking the epilepsy medication because he was worried about the side effects and for the next ten years the seizures stopped.
In 1996 Matt moved from sleepy Taunton to Exeter with his girlfriend Rachel. Matthew was born in Exeter and to him it definitely felt that he was coming home. The faces of Bart and Homer Simpson smiled out at you wherever you looked in their flat and the latest games console was usually lurking about somewhere.
In Spring 2001, shortly after working his first night shift at a Computer Call Centre, Matt ended up in hospital after an early morning tonic-clonic (grand-mal) seizure. His own doctor reassuringly said it was ˜probably a one off" and, despite Matt's history of epilepsy, took no further action. Matthew resumed his life as normal, working at the Call Centre during the day, and going to gigs, drinking beer and working on his web site in the evenings. He was excited about life, and the future - he and Rachel were about to buy their first house.
One morning two months later, Matt died. He was on a week's holiday and was asleep when Rachel went to work. The Coroner recorded ˜epilepsy" as the ˜Cause of Death".
Matt was a natural born worrier, and I believe that if he had been aware of the risks of epilepsy he would have found out as much as possible about his condition and done everything he could to prevent any more seizures. We'll never know now but we do know that he wouldn't have wanted to die at the age of just 29.
As a family we know that Matt's death must achieve something positive and we hope that this website can help someone in a similar situation, we know that Matt would.
Copyright © by EpilepsyInfo All Right Reserved.
