135: Overcome Illness and Adversity At Any Age with Marc Hoberman

Robert Plank: Today's guest is Marc Hoberman. He's a test prep expert and teen illness survivor, and he's going to be talking to us about teen illness, education, SAT prep, dealing with stress, speed reading and study skills, creating success in school and a whole lot more. How are things today, Mr. Marc?

Marc Hoberman: Doing very well, thank you. I appreciate it.

Robert Plank: Cool. No problem. I'm glad that you're here, so could you tell us a little bit about what it is that you do, and what makes you unique and special?

Marc Hoberman: I've been a teacher for 33 years, and I've had a tutoring business for about 25. I do a lot of tutoring in person and online. I have tutors who work for me. We do a lot of educational consulting for parents as well, for kids who are stressed out over school, and things of that nature. I've been in the camp training industry for many years, so I deal with a lot of children different ages, teens also. Because of an illness I had as a child. As a teen at the age of about 17, I was diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of 17 after having a seizure, grand mal seizure unfortunately, behind the wheel of a car, I wrote my book, "Search and Seizure, Overcoming Illness and Adversity".

Robert Plank: It sounds like because you've gone through it, you have these messages to help other people, too.

Marc Hoberman: That's exactly right. I started the book a while ago and stopped it. Then, about three years ago, my son came down with irritable bowel syndrome, IBS. That and a couple of skin issues, and he started getting a little depressed. I was very methodical about looking into it and fixing it, and finding him the right people. My wife said, "How come you're handling this so well? I'm a wreck." And I said, "You know, I think it's because I went through it, and I realized as a teacher, I could certainly help other people." A lot of times the emotionality of the illness is worse than the physicality of the illness.

Robert Plank: Interesting. As far as these illnesses and these things that hit us, is there a catchall or a one-size-fits-all, or a thing that we should all do no matter what hits us, or is it more of a case by case basis?

Marc Hoberman: It's a little of both. My big mantra in the book is I didn't let my illness define me. I defined it. I else didn't become who I am in spite of my illness, I am who I am because of my illness. You really want to embrace illness, stress, anything that you have, and deal with it that way instead of fighting it in other ways.

Robert Plank: As far as like what happened to you and what happened to your son, what happens to the people that you help out, do you look at it in terms of whatever gets in the way, is this something to be minimized, or do we roll with the punches? What happened with you from when you first came across this epilepsy thing into what happened now. what kind of breakthroughs and obstacles did you go through for that?

Marc Hoberman: Minimizing it, absolutely not. My hope is that in dealing with it a certain way, it minimizes itself on its own. Certainly not to minimize it, for the person to minimize it. To be honest, I'm 54 years old and until I wrote the book, there weren't 10 people in the world who knew I had epilepsy. I had family members who called in were shocked that I had this. There's a stigma attached to it, I was embarrassed, I did lose some friends, not a lot luckily, but there was so much more involved with it than just the illness.

I guess the turnaround was when I did open up about it, and I think that that's what you need to do, I think again - I'm an English teacher, so it comes with Julius Caesar. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." Your illness, your issues that you have, that might be the enemy, but you have to keep that close. You have to embrace it and you have to deal with it. It can't be minimized, you have to deal with it head-on. You have to grow into who you are and realize that any stressful situation that you have, that's part of who you are.

Robert Plank: It's part of the adversity you're going through, I guess.

Marc Hoberman: Correct.

Robert Plank: You came down with epilepsy. What have you been doing about make it work for you, I guess, this thing that's part of your life?

Marc Hoberman: I will tell you that from diagnosis of 17 to 19, that was the awful time. I did not have good medical care in Florida. My parents handled things well medically as far as getting me help and moving back to New York where we originated. Found a great doctor, Eli Goldensohn, who was an expert at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. Those two years were very rough Robert, because I was not controlled in the least.

First of all, I had a brand new 1977 Ford Mustang, which is on the cover of the book Search and Seizure, and everyone thinks, "Oh, search and seizure." They thought it could be about a drug bust because of the car, but the car is the car that I had the actual seizure in. To have a car for two or three months that was that beautiful, playing all the great music of the 70s, and being told I couldn't drive for six months was devastating for a teenager at that time. That was very rough.

There's petit mal seizures, which a lot of times people don't diagnose in time, because they could just be like dazing. Then there's grand mal seizures, and unfortunately, I had grand mal seizures always. A good thing quite honestly, was that I had petit mal seizures always preceding the grand mal, so my parents knew what a grand mal was going to happen because they could see me dazed and get very incoherent. I couldn't answer questions properly at all. I knew that being trapped in your own body, I knew that it was about to come on and I couldn't explain it or say anything.

Oddly enough, you see TV shows and you remember certain things. The only reason I started to watch Johnny Carson is that one of the medications I was on back in '78, dilantin, was too toxic for me. After about 9:00 at night, after I took it, I became so dizzy I couldn't walk. I wouldn't go to sleep until after my parents went to sleep because I couldn't walk into the bedroom. I didn't want to tell them, so I had to crawl back into bed for a good two months until we realized that it was too toxic for me. I wouldn't even be honest about what was going on because of what my parents were going through.

Robert Plank: That's pretty rough. Then what happened? Are you still unable to drive, or how did your life continue from that point?

Marc Hoberman: I was able to drive after six months. After that I was kind of controlled. When you have the seizure, at least for me, I start to remember two or three days later things that happened either during the seizure or shortly thereafter. This is in the book also. Although there is some humor in the book, obviously it was a very difficult situation. There was one time my father said, "You had a seizure in the doctor's office yesterday." I said, No I didn't." He said, "Yeah, you did," and he took out his wallet and my teeth marks were in it because when I went through the grand mal I was biting down, he put the wallet in my mouth, which is not something you do anymore. This is way back when.

Luckily, we moved to New York and I'm telling you, I walked into the doctor's office and talked into a tape recorder for 40 minutes, asked me at least 60 questions that I'd never heard before, gave me a new pill which back then was called valproic acid, which then changed the name to Depakine and Depakote. He gave me that pill and I never had a seizure after that for 28 years.

Robert Plank: Amazing.

Marc Hoberman: I would say maybe 10 or 15 years into it I was teaching in the Bronx, and he said, "Listen, you have no kids yet, we're going to experiment with taking you off, you may have grown out of it. If you can go about 18 months without a seizure, I think you're all good." Sixteen months later I had my worst seizure ever in the hallway of school, walking to class. It was in the Bronx, it was a tough neighborhood, they shut the school down because I fell, I chipped my tooth, I was bleeding. They didn't know if I was stabbed or shot or what happened. That was really bad, and I said, "You know what, if medication is going to fix it, I'm going to have to stick on the medication."

I have children I want to have, and things I want to do, and cars I want to drive, so I stayed on that medication up until actually a week ago. We just switched my meds, I had not an episode, but I had was called the perfect storm. I had an infection and I was on prednisone and I was on cough medicine, and I started to get incoherent. I really knew I was incoherent, which is unlike an epileptic petit mal seizure.

According to the doctors, they did an EEG, and they said there was no seizure activity so, they really think it's just that because I'm seizure-prone, it hampered my immune system a little bit, and manifested itself as almost like a haze, sort of like a petit mal, but they're not willing to call it a petit mal seizure. I guess since I started that other pill 28 years ago, they came out with a new pill. This is called Keppra. You don't have to test your blood levels. It's supposed to be a really good pill.

I must say, even as an educator and adult, I had to make a medical decision versus an emotional decision, because being seizure-free for 28 years is really quite wonderful and to know that I'm going to switch medications while I'm standing in front of a classroom. It's a humbling experience as I say in the book. Even though I was controlled, I speak in front of 300 people at camp conferences and reading conferences, at PTA meetings. It's in the back of my mind, what would happen if? That's something that's always there as well.

Robert Plank: In hearing about your story and your son's story and all these different things like that, would you say that - we all to one extent or another, we have that moment in life I guess, where something unexpected and permanent happens. Maybe for some of us it's not as drastic as having these lifelong seizures, but would you say we've all come across this point where there's something that came out of left field and something that will never go away? Something that we'll always have to manage and deal with. Would you say that everyone comes across that?

Marc Hoberman: Of course. Let's talk about parents getting divorced, the death of a loved one. An illness. Kids in school being bullied. Falling in love. All these things. There's no one who could possibly be untouched by these things.

Robert Plank: I guess that you brought up there, there's good and bad stuff, it's not just all unexpected, deaths, accidents, there are good and bad unexpected things coming across. Did you go through with both your situation with your parents, and then with your own son with his issues. Did you go through that point where you got the news, you know something's wrong, but you're uncertain about to do next? Have you gone through that kind of phase?

Marc Hoberman: Yes. Excellent question because luckily I've gotten many 5-star reviews and there's a company that gave me a 5-star review and he said that something my mother told me, this was two hours after I had the seizure in the car and I was back to the condo in Florida. She came in the room, very emotional woman, this is someone who was as I say in the book, cried at game shows. She sat down and said, "Look, this is the deal. You are a good-looking boy, you are funny, people like you, you're nice, you're kind, you're intelligent. This is something that's going to have to keep you grounded. This is something that's going to make you stronger and better, and we're going to deal with it together."

The reviewer I remember, wrote that this is - my mother's advice was advice that every parent should give every child at any moment of adversity. From that moment and discussion, that's how I moved forward.

Robert Plank: That's interesting. I like that, how this thing that might have been random, or it would be easy to take the victim way out, you assigned meaning to it. It's a thing that keeps you grounded.

Marc Hoberman: Make no mistake, there was a time period though, of victimization that I probably put on myself. More because of the stigma. Kids can be mean, and kids want intensely, to me a lot of people didn't know it, but I didn't want to tell my teachers. I went to school, I played in the school band, the clarinet and saxophone. The band director called me in and said, "Listen, your parents called. What should I do if you have a seizure?" First of all, I didn't know the answer to the question. Second of all, I was embarrassed that he knew, and I didn't tell very many people.

That part of it is that I didn't want it to define me, and I'm not going to lie. As a teenager part of it was the stigma that was attached. It seems a weakness, and I've learned through the years, especially as an educator for so long, that it's not me weakness, it's my strength.

Robert Plank: I like that. What's even more interesting about your case is that you grew up to become a teacher, so the same thing that you were worried about as a kid with the seizures, you're worried about again as an adult when you switching your medication or trying to get off your medication. There was the thing, ridicule possibilities there.

Marc Hoberman: Absolutely, and I don't care about it as much, I'd be lying if I said I didn't care at all, but that's not what I'm about any more. It was more about my own decisions. I said it was a medical and emotional decision as an educator, it should be a no-brainer. It should be, I'm doing the medical correct thing, but you have so many years, and such a history of freedom, you wouldn't know it, and I wouldn't know it if there was no side effects to the medication I was taking. There are side effects, I just never had them, thank God.

I had to make that decision, but there are so many kids that I teach who have diabetes, and some who do have epilepsy. Be it obesity, or any of these things, and the teen stress, and the teen suicides and so much going on. I really thought that this book would help a lot of the people, even the people that I tutor. I become very close with the families and I try to help with these issues.

Speaking from experience, even though it was a bad experience, I'd have to say at the end right now, it was a good experience. If I can help other people, that's a wonderful thing.

Robert Plank: Are you noticing with the people that you're helping, whether they have diabetes, or seizures, or obesity like you said, no matter what condition they have are the psychological parts - are there similarities, or are there some kind of steps that anyone could take, no matter what condition they see themselves in?

Marc Hoberman: I would say there's absolutely something they can do no matter what condition they see themselves in. I have what I think is a very powerful saying in the prologue of the book that after the seizure, it's like your own personal earthquake, but you have no memory of the seizure. It's a blessing and a curse. It a blessing because you don't remember, but it's a curse that you don't because I want to remember. I want to be able to embrace it and I want to be able to research it.

I don't know how old you are, I know you're a lot younger than I am, so I might a say a word that'll make you laugh, but microfiche. That' how I first had to research it because I was diagnosed 37 years ago. Now, you pop in the internet and forget about it. Side effects, and what can you do, I'm part of 15 groups, epilepsy groups, one of them is in Hungary, all over the place. There are so many lesson to be learned and if you can't learn from everything to me.

I gain strength from other epileptics. I am shocked and embarrassed that I only know now how many people are not controlled. I'm talking about babies, I'm conversing with people on the internet who it's beyond tragic. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. They're bringing families together, there's learning about your illness and saying, "Is it going to define me, or am I going to grow and be who I'm going to be because I have this."

Robert Plank: Would you say that it is helpful if someone researches and knows as much as possible about what they have?

Marc Hoberman: I would say 98% yes. Here's the only 2% no. When I first met my doctor in Columbia-Presbyterian, I said, "What are the side effects of this medicine?" He said, "Call me when you think you have something, because if I tell you ten side effects, you're going to feel nine." While it's true that too much information could be a little harmful, absolutely, positively research everything. You have to seek out the experts, you have to ask questions, but you have to educate yourself. I went to the library when I first was diagnosed and then read many books on it. Not so much the pharmacology, but just the illness itself.

The different tests, I took five tests when I was in the hospital. One was a CAT scan with contrast. No test showed that I had any seizure activity except for the EEG. The least invasive test, the test that hurt the least, that's the only thing that showed it. You're coming more knowledgeable about it, and about other people who have it now. That's your strength.

Robert Plank: I hadn't even thought about that, like there's two sides of the knowledge coin there, is that there's the medical part and all the facts, and there's also you mentioned, a little bit there, the stories and all about other people who you know you're not alone in this condition. That was important.

Marc Hoberman: I had two close friends in Florida, a close friend or two that I had left behind in New York, and they were very, very, very helpful. You don't need 50. You need whatever your support network is. Family, friends, doctor, whoever. You need that set number and you need to lean on that and embrace that constantly.

Robert Plank: It's not just a one-shot deal, you have to keep going back to that.

Marc Hoberman: Absolutely. This is your support staff, and your support system. It's as important as you being your own support. A lot of people are not their own support system, and that's where I think that I differ from some. My sense of humor comes across in the book a bit, and I try to keep that and that also helped me in my, I don't want to call it recovery, but in my management of my illness.

Robert Plank: Let's talk a little about that. Let's talk about you and your book and the things you do, because we mentioned the book a few times, and I understand that you also do online tutoring and cool stuff like that. Is that right?

Marc Hoberman: Right. It's funny. I only started to do the online tutoring because it was one year, four years ago where it snowed every Tuesday, and I lost all my Tuesday clients, and I was kind of booked and really had no place else to put them, so they started to get pretty upset. I found this online platform, and it's outstanding, because it's a live whiteboard and I write on it and they see it in real time. They write an essay, I see it in real time. My tutors being chemistry and math, they have pads that they use. It goes right online and they love that. I can seem them, they can see me. I

f you walked in the room with your eyes closed, you would think they were in the room with you. It really helps me also in my educational consulting because when I talk to parents about how to organize their children, and do successful studying skills, I can show them together as a family right online. It really has helped a lot. We do a lot of college advisement also. It connects me to people, it's not just about the tutoring, it's about the connecting to people and helping them.

Some people are great study skills, some have no organization skills and time management which many of the colleges say, that one of the major problems of the freshmen certainly, that come in, would be the time management. We help with all that, and I said I have tutors who work for me, so the internet has been a Godsend for many reasons.

Robert Plank: As far as the tutoring goes, is that just something where you get those students from local from you, or are you using the internet to get new people?

Marc Hoberman: It was local, and it branched out, because now people are be able to tell their cousins, who are in, could be Alaska. This guy's good with ACT prep or SAT prep, or he helped Johnny with this, or your cousin had very bad test anxiety and he's helped with that. I also have an expert I work with with test anxiety. I'm able to reach out more, which is the reason I'm doing the radios show, because I want to reach out to people that way too.

It started by accident locally, but I have local kids who were refusing to come back. They live a mile away and they said this is the best. It's technology, I watch you, I turn you off, I go back to bed. It works locally, but I really want to widen the reach, especially for educational consulting. I think that there's a lot frustration and stress on the parents.

I think some parents stress their kids, of course unintentionally, and I've been doing this a long time, and teaching a long time, so I've been a dean of students, the behavioral issues also for six years, so I feel it gives me an opportunity to help them along with their kids' growth academically.

Robert Plank: That's a really important thing it sounds like. Is there a place where people can find out about you and your tutoring online, is there a website for that?

Marc Hoberman: Yes. The website for that is www.gradesuccess.com. The author site for the book is marchoberman.com.

Robert Plank: Okay. MarcHoberman.com and it looks like the search and seizure book is right there. Is the book on Amazon as well?

Marc Hoberman: The book is on Amazon, it's on Kindle, it's going to be available on the iBooks soon. If people go online I could also send them an ebook form, so it's available in many different forms. Certainly Amazon is great, Kindle is instantaneous obviously.

Robert Plank: Yes. Search and Seizure looks a great bookmark, and what I've been hearing over and over from our talk today, the common thread that I keep hearing is that you found something that worked for you, whether that's the tutoring, or managing this illness that you did not expect. It's like in all these situations you find something that works good for you, and then you did a little bit of playing around, or experimenting, or research and it grew on its own, whether it was the speaking about the seizures, or it was about the tutoring, I think there's something really cool to that. To not have any of these big huge plans, but just get a handle on yourself, try some new things, and then grows on its own, especially with the way that this online tutoring has picked up for you.

Marc Hoberman: It's a lifetime commitment. I never stop learning, as i said I've been teaching 33 years. I'm coming out with a book in a couple of months teaching strategies and it teach other teachers. I still go into classrooms where I know teachers have great reputations and I sit and watch them also. You cannot stop learning. You have to always be open to learning and getting more information. Knowledge is power. Period.

Robert Plank: I agree about a billion percent. Thanks for coming on the show Marc, and sharing what you have to share with us. MarcHoberman.com and Search and Seizure is the book. Thanks again.

Marc Hoberman: My pleasure. Thanks.