In late May, Katelyn Hanson, 17, and Marissa Tomlinson, 19, were walking on 600 East in American Fork, sharing the earbuds of an iPod, when suddenly Marissa began to stagger and shuffle her feet.

"The water was going into her mouth and nose and she was trying to breathe," Katelyn said.

Katelyn jumped into the water, pulled Marissa's head into her lap "to support her head so she wouldn't drown," and then called a friend from her cell phone. Within moments, passersby ran to assist the girls, and then paramedics arrived. Marissa was taken to the hospital and treated for hypothermia and an epileptic seizure.

"I felt scared but I couldn't show it because that would freak her out," Katelyn recalled of the ordeal. "The first thought that came to my mind was that no friend of mine was dying on my watch."

Had Katelyn not been there, Marissa could easily have drowned. Unfortunately, it is the kind of pain that the Tomlinson family of American Fork is all too familiar with.

With three epileptic children, one of whom died of a seizure almost 20 years ago, the family is forced to live everyday knowing the next seizure is coming, just no one can say when, or what it will cause.

Only 3 percent of families with an epileptic member have more than one, and even fewer three, said Michelle Tomlinson, Marissa's mother.

"It is very rare to have it run in the family," she said.

It was in December of 1989 when the couple's first child and only son, Bret, had his first seizure. He was just nine months old.

"I had him in the sink giving him a bath and he went into one," Tomlinson said. "We had no clue what was going on and that is when they first said, don't worry, seizures don't kill anybody."

It wasn't long before that statement would come to haunt the family.

Bret had seizures about once every two months from then on. It was about 9 a.m. on Nov. 5, 1989, when Bret was 20 months old, that his father, Cliff Tomlinson, decided to check on the baby, who had been sleeping unusually soundly in his bedroom.

"I had just woke up," Cliff Tomlinson recalled. "I thought it was weird for him to be asleep."

He went into his son's room to find Bret in the fetal position, his body blue. When the father picked up his son, it was clear he had been dead for some time.

Cliff Tomlinson set his son down and went to tell his wife, who at first thought he was kidding and told him the joke was not funny. If only he had been kidding.

"I tried mouth-to-mouth," Michelle Tomlinson said. "I still remember that. Nothing happened. Nothing would go in."

Both parents are clearly pained as they relive that day.

An autopsy revealed no cause of death. Medical examiners decided their son had died of lack of oxygen while having a seizure in his sleep.

Both Marissa and the couple's second daughter with epilepsy, Cortnee, are prone to unusually long seizures and usually have to be hospitalized afterward to deal with lack of oxygen to the brain, their mother said. Both girls suffer from mild developmental delays from oxygen deprivation.

Both girls have faced other challenges because of their disease. Marissa cannot have a driver's license because she has seizures so often.

Recently when she had her first boyfriend, her mother had to take the unusual step of calling her boyfriend and his father over to tell them about Marissa's seizures and what they would need to do if she had one while with them.

And both girls have some shyness and have felt some social stigma because they cannot control having seizures in school or with friends.

Both girls take medications.

One day they will face the decisions of having children of their own, which will force them to abandon their medication at least for a time because it causes birth defects.

And they face the risk of passing their disease to the next generation.

The girls face risks every day. Doctors recently decided to take Cortnee off her medication because she had not had a seizure in two years. On her first day off her medication, she had a seizure.

On many occasions, strangers, teachers, school nurses, neighbors and friends have stepped in during seizures to help.

The girls have had seizures in the car while their mother was driving, seizures at church activities, and seizures in class. Marissa was once discovered having a seizure alone outside during a microburst storm. Both parents said they want to say thank you to everyone in the community who has aided them when they needed help.

Cliff Tomlinson said he is grateful to everyone who sees one of his daughters having a seizure and decides to get involved, to make sure they are safe.

The couple said they are grateful to those who reserve judgment about their daughters, who love them for who they are.

The couple said they decided to share their family's experience in the hopes that more families will speak out about epilepsy and the blessings it brings.

"I don't think many people talk about it," Michelle Tomlinson said. "I think we should all have compassion. We don't know what people are going through."¬