{"id":13769,"date":"2022-10-25T15:01:56","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T19:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.simonssearchlight.org\/?p=13769"},"modified":"2023-10-05T11:39:47","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T15:39:47","slug":"half-my-childhood-is-gone-growing-up-with-autism-and-epilepsy-from-spark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.simonssearchlight.org\/2022\/10\/25\/half-my-childhood-is-gone-growing-up-with-autism-and-epilepsy-from-spark\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rangers Family Story (an excerpt from SPARK)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>\u201cHalf My Childhood is Gone\u201d: Growing up with Autism and Epilepsy <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Abigail Ranger does not remember everything about her childhood. But she knows the outsized role that epilepsy played in it.<\/p>\n<p>Ranger, who has autism and epilepsy, struggled with serious and hard to control seizures that began when she was in preschool. After a seizure, she would lose skills and even her memory of past events, says her mother, Denise Ranger.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHalf my childhood is gone because of the seizures. I got sick so many times,\u201d says Abigail, who is 33.<\/p>\n<p>About a decade ago, Abigail discovered the reason for her autism and epilepsy. She has a small duplication of genetic material on one chromosome. In 2012, she joined <span class=\"notranslate\">Simons Searchlight<\/span>, a research program for people who have variations in genes and chromosomes that contribute to autism and neurodevelopmental conditions.<\/p>\n<p>The Rangers also participate in the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sparkforautism.org\/why\/\"><span class=\"notranslate\">SPARK<\/span><\/a>\u00a0autism study, a sister program to <span class=\"notranslate\">Simons Searchlight<\/span>. They hope to connect with other families like theirs. Denise would like to learn more about what the future holds for adults with autism and genetic conditions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would like to know more about what is expected as you age. What should you be prepared for?\u201d Denise Ranger asks.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/sparkforautism.org\/discover_article\/autism-epilepsy\/\">Read the full Ranger family story on <span class=\"notranslate\">SPARK<\/span>&#8217;s website.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Rangers family participates in the SPARK autism study and Simons Searchlight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":13771,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonssearchlight.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13769"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonssearchlight.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonssearchlight.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonssearchlight.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonssearchlight.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13769"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonssearchlight.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13782,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonssearchlight.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13769\/revisions\/13782"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonssearchlight.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonssearchlight.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonssearchlight.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonssearchlight.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}