Replacing the stigma of ‘epileptic’ with a tasteless acronym and coming full circle

I am not a member of the medical community, but an epileptic man having completed a book manuscript discussing the state of epileptology from the perspective of a patient. While researching topics, I have read numerous articles from Seizure. In the process of doing so, I have become disillusioned by the stigmatization that I have felt in the endeavor. I refer to the habit of many of your contributors to condense myself and fellow sufferers into a label reminiscent of what one might find on the leader-board of the London Stock Exchange. While I might be unique in this regard, I find that referring to others as an acronym or an abbreviation is generally discourteous. Thus, when I see the phrase ‘person with epilepsy’ altered to ‘PWE’ too frequently, my afflicted temporal lobes lose track of whether or not I am being thought of as a human or as a laboratory chemical. While working in a lab, I often made use of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide. Like all others, I abbreviated it to CTAB. Such a convention is unnecessary for writing about human beings of any kind. Within our trains of thought, people often convert acronyms to words. We also do so in speech. America’s North American Aerospace Defense Command is not referred to as N-O-R-A-D; it is called ‘nor’-add’. Similarly, our space program is not spoken of as N-A-S-A; it is ‘na’-suh’. When I read ‘PWE’ to excess, my epileptic brain converts it to a moniker which is better applied to an avian species, Contopus virens. The moniker has other applications – all of which are derogatory.