About Ingrid
Birmingham native Ingrid Pfau, 34, was born with cerebral palsy on the right side of her body and was diagnosed with epilepsy when she was an 18-year-old undergraduate at UAB. Her seizures are largely drug resistant, but she takes medicine to help with focal impaired awareness, or complex partial seizures, and tonic-clonic, or grand mal seizures.
Ingrid had a vagus nerve stimulator, or VNS, inserted several years ago to help keep the seizures shorter, but she never goes a week without having a complex partial seizure where she loses complete awareness of her body.
Seizures do not stop her from doing her job as Lead Media Producer at the National Center on Health, Physical Activity and Disability (NCHPAD). She has worked at NCHPAD for over eight years and has learned something valuable from every interview she has conducted and every video she has produced. At work and with friends, Ingrid has learned to be vulnerable, sharing how her VNS can shorten her seizures – and even make them end.
Ingrid’s friends and family, including her father, mother (a native of Chile), and three sisters (including her twin), are very important to her. While she would love to drive and have more independence, she finds companionship while traveling, hiking and swimming.
Ingrid Pfau on Ableism
[00:00] I’m Ingrid Pfau. I’m from Birmingham, Alabama, and I have C.P. and epilepsy but they are not all that defines me. I'm also a filmmaker, a sibling, one of four of my wonderful mother's children, a person that loves cats, and loves to travel.
[00:20] Epilepsy has taught me that time is very precious. Every time I have a seizure that's time taken away from me. It's a little reminder of what it would feel like if you were to suddenly just stop [sound of finger snap] and be unable to function.
[00:34] I hope this photo allows people to realize that this is some of the internalized ableism that I deal with every day. I feel tied to these medications because if you take that medication away from me, I'm afraid of being unable to function the next day. Yes, I hate the meds, but they are a lifeline for me.