Board of Nursing and Epilepsy

I wanted to share my story to maybe encourage someone who does not know where to turn. I am an RN who happens to have epilepsy. It was well controlled until I had a seizure at work, on 2 different occasions. One was due to a fire drill, where the strobes were on for loner than 30 minutes. Being the only RN on the floor I could not abandon patients, I had to endure until I could have relief called in. The consequences of that caused me to have a seizure. Second was after being ill with back to back infections, Norovirus and influenza. Well both were reported and my being naïve, I did not lawyer up. Lesson learned. I was placed with warning with stips, the usual for one year. I moved to another state and was granted a license with additional compliance requirements. Today at peer assistance, I found out what those were. They include random drug and alcohol screens. Really?? Not sure why someone who has epilepsy would be subjected to the same as someone who had reasoning for those tests to be preformed. I suspect if a nurse who was diabetic, became hypoglycemic and had a seizure, or hypertensive would they be required to comply. especially having to pay for them out of pocket. What has nursing become? We cannot recognize that we age, that the same medical conditions we treat in our patients we are not "allowed" to have. I don't remember that nurse who has COPD from smoking for 30 years being told, that there are sanctions pending and hoops must be jumped through to work! I understand patient safety but where does it cross the line, if you work from home and have no direct contact with patients. Seems like there should be somewhere a nurse can turn to help us against a board who has no interest in what is fair to us. Sad day!