Family's warning

Jennifer, Mark and Katie. Photo / Janna Dixon

The distraught family of a girl who died after an epileptic fit want to warn other sufferers to keep up their medication.

Ana-Maria Addison, 20, had a seizure in bed the morning she planned to get more pills but had already gone three days without her medicine.

"She had changed her medication but she was doing well with the new one," her father Mark Addison said. "She was away from home for a few days and had run out. She hadn't had a pill for three days and the chemical balance wasn't right."

Ana-Maria's younger sister Katie, 17, found her sister having a fit in bed at the family home on Wednesday in Henderson, West Auckland, and called their father who was at work.

"Usually she comes out of the seizure and she is okay but this time was different," Addison said.

Addison told Katie to call an ambulance and rushed home from work in Manurewa. By the time he got back, his daughter was dead.

Ana-Maria had changed her medication because the most recent pills were making her groggy and hurt her eyes. "I would say to other people to keep taking their medicine, don't get to the point where they run out - that is important."

The father-of-three, who separated from the girls' mother three years ago, was trying to focus on the good times.

Ana-Maria had been on a sickness benefit because of her epilepsy and had an 18-month-old baby boy, who was being cared for by the father's parents. "She was a bit of a lost soul in a way but she was getting to the point where she was looking at getting into work," Addison said.

"She had a big heart and would do anything for anyone."