Epilepsy

The amount of epilepsy in this town is beginning to freak me out - with every day that goes by, I hear about another child or teenager that is diagnosed with it. Luckily, some of them just have it as a childhood condition and the seizures will not persist through their adult years, but others are less fortunate and not only will they have to be on medication for the rest of their lives, but they will still have to suffer through seizures. Two teens at the library that I know of have it, two adults who are patrons, a number of the staff's children had it when they were younger, and in the last couple days I've just heard about a few babies that have been diagnosed with it. I'm no medical expert and people can feel free to contradict me on this, but I wonder if this is one of these conditions that is getting worse with time, due to various environmental factors and whatnot, or if it is still only genetic. It's not like autism or ADD where kids could be misdiagnosed - I think it's pretty clear who is having seizures and who isn't, right? Even if it is genetic I still find it a little bit scary in that I'm not sure I'd want to have kids here ... what if the guy that I meet has a history of it in his family? Would I still want to have children? I guess that's a bit of moot point because thus far there is no guy, and I'm sort of hoping there won't be one either. Now if I meet someone who is visiting from Australia or Italy and wants to take me back there with him, that's a whole other story.