Table 3.

School Experience Themes, Categories, and Exemplar Statements.

Theme	Category	Exemplar Statement
Stressors	Internal	“Sometimes getting bad memories, sometimes thinking too much of the past, and sometimes that just affects me emotionally.”
	External	“Attendance and make-up work has been the biggest thing.”
		“I’m stressed ‘cause I’m like, ‘Well, what about my future? I’ll never get into a college with these kind of grades.’”
		“Seizures themselves are stressful.”
		“It stressed me out to feel like I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything.”
Bullying	Reasons	“And it was mainly kids felt that it was unfair that I still got to go on a senior trip, I got to do this, I got to do that, when these things were attendance based. Well, these were things I couldn’t help.”
		“They called me attention-whore and things like that.”
	Forms	“I had stuff thrown at me, things like that. I had one kid throw probably the biggest rock I had ever seen at me one day when I was getting in my sister-in-law’s car and yelled at me that if a brain injury started all of this, maybe another one could cure it.”
		“I would get letters put on my locker or in my locker.”
	Perpetrators	“When the school had called and told me that I was scaring the other children, I definitely felt a sense of… I felt attacked in a sort of that way.”
Accusations of “faking it”	Health care	“EMS said, ‘Sign these papers quickly because we have somebody with real chest pain to go get to.’”
	School	“They (school personnel) thought I was faking the whole thing to get out of school.”
		“The principal decided to agree with everything he read online that they’re faked for attention and stuff like that.”
		“My school nurse thinks that I fake it and she just thinks I fake all of it.”
		“Yeah, everyone thinks it’s just for attention, but I don’t know why I’d put myself through having a seizure and hitting my head and having a bump on my head just for attention. That’s not the way to get attention.”
Left out	School-inflicted	“I can’t go to extracurricular activities like ball games. Veteran’s day was yesterday, they had a whole assembly and stuff. I cannot go to stuff like that…They’re afraid that I’m going to fall out and have a seizure, and then it would be a mess.”
		“Every second that I had that I wasn’t insanely stressed or worried about having a seizure or actually having a seizure was spent frantically trying to catch up on the work. I was either having seizures, or I was catching up as much as possible, and I was always behind. So yeah, I didn’t really have any time to talk to people in the hallways or anything.”
	Peer-inflicted	“They had just kicked me out of everything. They would talk to me; they would call me crazy.”
	Health care-inflicted	“Last year I was going to try out for cheerleading for the fall season, and I was denied a physical at [an urgent care clinic], because they said no one would give me a physical with unexplained seizures.”
	Self-inflicted	“During school spirit week we would all gather into the gym, and I would always sit out during those moments.”
School-management	Negative	“The school administration was awful. I remember when I went over my limit for seizures, they roll out new plans.”
		“After new superintendent and lawyer got involved, they wouldn’t get blamed, they have to call 911 first to make sure I’m okay, and then call my grandma.”
		“They didn’t know what to do with me, so they just told me to walk around. So, I was walking by lockers, there’s this hall, where you just can walk by yourself. And I fell and hit my head and had a seizure. And they didn’t really do anything, they just said, ‘Oh, okay, go back to class.’”
		“If they (principal’s assistant and counseling assistant) were called, I all but started crying because they would put all of their weight on me… They would move me to one side, and then put all of their weight to try and constrict the movement. And this hurt more than anything.”
		“I’ve had teachers say that they didn’t want me as a student ‘cause they just… It’s a lot of extra stuff they have to deal with, and it’s a distraction for the class, stuff like that.”
	Positive	“The teachers, generally, were pretty nice. They’re very accommodating.”
		“They have an elevator ‘cause I can’t go up the stairs, ‘cause they’re afraid I’m gonna fall down the stairs. I get to go up the elevator every day. That’s extremely helpful.”
		“Well, they’re also extremely interested with my condition. They’ve signed so many release forms and talked with my doctors, and my psychiatrists, and tons of hospitals that have treated me with my condition.”
		“In school we’ve all come up with a plan. One person has to go get the teacher, one helps me out and stuff like that.”
	Ideal	“I feel like just as it’s scary for me, of course, it’s also scary for them. I feel like if people recognize the fear in both accounts, it would help a lot of situations that I had to go through.”
		“I would want them to respond kind of not in fear but in confidence of knowing what they could do, kinda like the basic necessity. Make sure their airway is opened, protect their head, make sure they’re not restraining them.”