AFL great Brett Ratten makes heartbreaking admission about daughter’s health battle
Carlton great and much-loved AFL icon Brett Ratten has opened up on his 12-year-old daughter’s scary health battle.
Speaking on the podcast Between Us, Ratten has detailed the experience of Tilly, who started having up to 30 seizures a day in 2019.
“Her seizures are a little bit different,” Ratten said.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“We didn’t know if it was absentee epilepsy or focal epilepsy. Her head went to the side, and then you would see the whites of her eyes and she would stop and freeze and pause for 20 or 30 seconds.
“She would have up to 30 a day, but then when the medication came in, it started to affect her balance, so she started to fall over.”
Ratten, who tragically lost his 16-year-old son in a horrific car accident in 2015, made the heartbreaking admission that he would have happily had the seizures himself if it meant his daughter did not have to go through the ordeal.
“Your heart goes out to think, ‘Could you give it to me?’ And then I can deal with it. But you can’t,” he said.
“The good part was we found out what it was, so then you can start the process of trying to deal with it.
“We were quite fortunate it took around three months and then the seizures started to stop. That was great.
“At one point the medication kicked in and the seizures stopped, and we’ve been fortunate since.”
It certainly is good news for Ratten (who played over 250 games at Carlton and has also coached the Blues, St Kilda and North Melbourne) and his daughter.
But Ratten admits Cooper is never too far from his thoughts.
“Some days I can say his name and nothing, I’m OK, and then other days I say his name and it’s waterworks everywhere,” Ratten said.
“He’s not with us but he’s with us every day.”
Ratten is raising awareness about epilepsy for the for the Epilepsy Foundation while the annual Walk for Epilepsy is in full swing (ends October 25).
The an annual initiative encourages participants to run, ride or walk to raise awareness and funds to support people living with epilepsy. It has current raised over $300,000 for the cause.
To find out more about Walk for Epilepsy, head here.
Originally published on 7NEWS Sport
