My name is Dr. Erika Axeen. I'm a pediatric neurologist and epileptologist here at UVA. I'm a child neurologist, but also an epileptologist. And the bulk of my time is spent taking care of children with epilepsy and some adults with epilepsy. I care for children in clinic and in the hospital during their admissions for seizures or epilepsy, and I also read EEGs.
I first became interested in medicine as a career watching my older sister go through medical school. She's a bit older than me though. I had a good role model in that regard, and that created my interest in medicine. I knew that I wanted to be a pediatrician, but when I took care of a child during my medical school who had infantile spasms, which is a rare type of epilepsy, I really got to experience what the families had to go through of learning the diagnosis, navigating the treatments and the expected long-term follow up, and so that patient really stuck with me of how much we could really help families and work together to try to help that child's life.
My area of interest and expertise is with genetic epilepsy. This includes diagnosing genetic disorders in children with epilepsy, finding the right treatments and medications for them, and following them long-term. Here at UVA, we're a comprehensive epilepsy center, so this means we offer all the services necessary to treat children with epilepsy, whether it's a straightforward epilepsy or more complex epilepsy. So we offer access to medications, dietary therapy, devices such as a vagal nerve stimulator, or in some children, even a surgical evaluation. And knowing that they have all those options here at UVA is really important that their child is getting everything that they need in their epilepsy care.