Stefan Rudolph
On October 2nd, 1988, Stefan Rudolph was like any other teenage football player in San Diego. He played for his high school team on Friday nights and played tackle football on the playgrounds with his friends every Sunday. However, on this day, Stefan took a knee to the head mid-tackle. He’s lived with epilepsy ever since.
“A friend took me to the hospital in his car, where I was in a coma for three days! He told me that I had a seizure for the full ten-minute drive to the emergency room, and I learned I almost had to have brain surgery due to the swelling, concussion, and major seizures...” he said.
Despite this, Stefan was not fully aware that he had been diagnosed with long-term epilepsy. So, like many other young people, he continued to experiment with alcohol and marijuana – but two specific factors ultimately altered his future forever.
“I kept having petit mals but I didn’t know what they were; I just felt dizzy, anxious, and nauseous. But my addiction and escapism through life with alcoholism also started when I was 16 and by the time I was 21, I was drinking every night in college,” he said. “Then one Sunday while I was studying in my college library for the upcoming week, of course after drinking all week, I had a grand mal seizure. I woke up with the paramedics around me, and they were the ones to tell me that I now had epilepsy.”
This combination of epilepsy and alcohol abuse continued to impact Stefan’s life. While he managed to avoid having any more grand mal seizures for some time, all through the medication he was taking, he continued to have "petit mal" or "small mal" seizures two or three times or more every week throughout his early twenties. These would be minor, short-term, 30 seconds or so, where he said "it felt like death creeping up on me, but would go away!"
Then later in life after college, despite being married, having a successful financial sales career and even working on having a family in life, Stefan’s drinking and seizures continued. “In 2002, I got my first DUI. At this point, I lost my six figure income pharmaceutical sales job six months later, and my marriage completely fell apart. In two years, I was divorced and then after splitting all our assets, I took all the money I had earned in life and began to gamble it away at the casinos!” Stefan said. “I then had two epileptic car accidents in 2004, in large part due to the stress, combined with escapism through alcohol that I was experiencing in life.”
Over the next few years, Stefan continued to struggle. Then after having two epileptic seizure accidents while driving, he found himself driving to work every day on a suspended license for six months because he had to work to support himself. At this time, he had been to an alcohol rehabilitation center and stopped drinking for one year, but the seizures never went away, and eventually the alcohol returned, the hangovers and dehydration time got worse and epilepsy continued to grow into a major life problem.
At the age of 34, Stefan moved in with his parents and was soon facing brain surgery time in his life. He sold off all of his belongings to pay his gambling debts, went to rehab again and finally stopped drinking in order to prepare for the surgery. Still, his seizures continued, leading him to a medical crossroad. “I’m getting ready for brain surgery and the doctor says, ‘If you ever drink again, you cannot have this surgery. You’ll be disqualified.’ So I was sober for a year because I wanted to have the surgery and get better,” Stefan said. “Then on May 9th, 2007, I had a left temporal lobe awake craniotomy.”
Despite this surgery, like everyone who deals with alcohol and/or substance abuse, Stefan continued to experience relapses. Then in February 2008, he narrowly avoided prison time due to having his 3rd DUI in 6 years. He had also begun battling having "exercise-induced seizures." That being, when he tried to regain his strength in the gym, workout, run, play racquetball, etc, all combined with drinking at night, this was a horrible mixture of lifestyles and ultimately got worse for him medically. Stefan would later be in and out of the hospital "8 times" in two years from 2008 to 2010 due to seizures; also combined with ultimately spending 6 weeks, or 42 days even, that being what is equivalent to "1,000 Hours" in jail as well. While not the ideal type of way to sober up in life for anyone, being "scared straight" like this is what led to Stefan's long-term sobriety.
“When I sobered up in jail, I kept saying 'Thank You God! Thank you for not letting me die. Thank you for putting me here in jail. I need this time here to grow up and straighten up in life." Then after getting out of jail in November of 2012, I focused on meditation, on an "Attitude of Gratitude" and was more thankful for every moment in life overall, good or bad," he said. “It was an eye opener, how stupid it all was: the fights, the alcohol, the drugs, the jail, the divorce. I didn’t want to live that life of insanity any more.”
Stefan’s last grand mal seizure happened in 2011, when he was still drinking. But once the alcohol went away, so did his seizures and auras. “Over around a four year period, I made significant lifestyle changes. I cut out all the crap I was eating when it came to fast food and sodas because they made me feel the anxiety that used to come right before a seizure,” he said. “Then by 2017, I had a very good work lifestyle building up from running my new sales and marketing business as an entrepreneur, where I began growing as a life coach, recovery coach, epilepsy coach and a motivational speaker. I had also published my first book co-authored with Les Brown called "Living With Heart" and began working on my second book entitled, "Thank You to the 1,000th Power!”
In jail in 2012, Stefan stopped all his medication for epilepsy and had changed his lifestyle. And then by sobering up never experienced any more seizures. By journeying down this path, he was inspired to write and publish his second book and record it as an audiobook on Audible and Spotify and then began participating in numerous motivational speaking events as well, while working in a nonprofit organization as well.
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Today, Stefan is 12 years sober and focused on supporting people who are actively dealing with epilepsy, seizures and even battling alcoholism, addiction, escapism and working on leading a new path in their own life.
“I never tell people to get off of medication. But what I do tell people is to pay closer attention to your lifestyles, your eating habits and/or your drinking of alcohol or escapism routes in life. That includes what you eat, what you drink, how you sleep, and what is stressing you out in life. You have to be aware! And not just take prescription drugs such as antidepressants to mask it. You have to face it, change it and grow from it!” he said. “I focus on supporting people holistically. I’m not here to change you, you have to change yourself. So I am here to help you...help yourself. It's your life, your choice and your responsibility to face the challenges in life and change in life as change is a part of challenge; literally and figuratively: CHA-lle-NGE.”
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