Martin was born at home on St David’s Day, Sunday 1st March 1970. He died at home on Sunday, 29th July 2007 aged 37 years of an epileptic seizure after taking a bath. Martin was the youngest son of three boys and had a younger sister.
Martin was a lovely baby with large blue eyes and blonde hair. Martin’s first seizure occurred when he was nine years old though this was not diagnosed until he had a second seizure about one month later. Martin’s family were advised by the hospital that he had the petit mal type of epilepsy and that there was a good chance he would grow out of it. The seizures he had then were mild and trance like.
Aged 16 years Martin was taken off of all the medication as he had had a period of about 2 years free of seizures. Unfortunately after a couple of months he had a major seizure whilst at home with his sister and was put back on the medication.
Martin worked as an office administrator in a nationwide firm of auditors for 13 years and was a highly respected member of staff. Whenever there was a problem Martin was the one to sort it out.
Martin had a large circle of friends and enjoyed nothing more than to socialise with them. He was the life and soul of the party.
Martin enjoyed collecting DVD’s and CD’s and video games. He was a great film buff and there wasn’t much he didn’t know about the classics, westerns, thrillers, comedies, horrors, James Bond etc. His sporting interests were cars, particularly F1, motorbikes, snooker, billiards and darts. He was a great snooker player in his own right.
“We were never advised what could trigger a seizure and were never told that there was a possibility of sudden death. We believed that it was circumstance as to where a seizure occurred that may cause a death from epilepsy; not the epilepsy itself.”
“We are very proud, privileged and extremely lucky to have had Martin. He had a loving, caring and generous nature with a brilliant sense of humour. He always looked for the good in people and never spoke ill of anyone. He never once complained about his epilepsy and got on with his life as independently as he could. It is very sad and tragic that his life was cut short so suddenly by this terribly cruel illness of epilepsy. We hope that by working with Epilepsy Bereaved we can support more research and publicity and assist the charity in preventing deaths from epilepsy.
