Aleisha Wilson was checking on a patient in a Cortland County nursing facility when she blacked out and collapsed during her overnight shift in 2007. A nurse found Aleisha just as she awoke from what she had called one of her “spells,” which she had kept confidential for many years. As a single mom, her job, driver’s license, and car were crucial to providing for four children. Now her secret was out, and in quick order she lost her job, surrendered her driver’s license, and gave away her Pontiac Grand Am. She spent the next 10 years applying for disability and public assistance benefits, raising three children to adulthood, getting her youngest ready to graduate high school this June, and seeing dozens of doctors about her spells. She now spends her days in a carefully organized Cortland apartment watching TV, playing with her black-and-white cat, Roscoe, visiting family, shopping, and having fewer worries about her spells that had become daily concerns. (more…)