I ignored my symptoms of epilepsy, and nearly killed three people.
One morning I offered to drive my youngest brother and nephew to the beach. I drove along Highway 246 with the boys in the back seat.
Next thing I knew I woke exhausted and confused strapped to a gurney in an ambulance speeding toward a hospital.
I was later told I had a grand mal seizure. I had driven the car off the road. The car nearly flipped over. No one was hurt but we dodged a scary bullet.
Having that seizure helped to make sense of other odd past experiences, waking up one morning to find my ankle cut to the bone and blood on the glass edge of a nearby aquarium, moods of agitated confusion I often suffered while in high school.
I wasn't an idiot after all! I simply had a short in my electrical wiring. I found solace in arrogant denial and chose to ignore the disorder. Yes, even after the car accident. The accident caused me to lose my license so what was the problem?
But then I went blind.
The petit mal seizure struck a few days after the car accident. While in the shower I began to see a rainbow of colored lights swirling in my vision. The colored lights grew along with pressure in my skull.
I couldn't see!
A strange terror overwhelmed me. I talked out loud while desperately trying to ignore the fear. I pleaded with God to make it stop. It seemed as if all the monsters in the world were after me.
Suddenly darkness swallowed the lights. The fear vanished. My sight gradually returned. I found myself sitting on the floor of the shower stall with my throbbing head in my arms. The pain stopped within minutes. I felt fine, as if the seizure never happened.
I called a neurologist that day and bullied an appointment out of the receptionist. I was later diagnosed as having temporal lobe epilepsy.
Now, in seventy percent of the population afflicted with epilepsy the cause is unknown. The disorder often runs in families.
But it can also be caused by damage to the brain caused by head injuries or brain diseases. Meningitis, for example, or a tumor.
Children who suffer an extreme fever can later develop epilepsy. My fever ran at one hundred four degrees for two weeks, to give you an example. I was fourteen years old. My neurons fried, baby.
I also have an uncanny knack for getting struck in the head by moving objects, balls, bats, doors, even a seagull one time. If the object is moving toward my head it will knock me out.
I'm the only person in my family with epilepsy. Connecting the dots isn't hard.
But never fear! The majority of epilepsy cases can be controlled with medication. Most epileptics can and do live a normal life as if the disorder didn't exist.
I use the old standby drug Dilantin to control my seizures. I haven't had a seizure in years. I work, drive a car, and do normal every day things like any other person, but only because I'm on medication to control my rebellious brain.
If you have any of the following symptoms of epilepsy then please get to a doctor and tell him or her what you suspect:
1. You often wake feeling sore, exhausted, and disoriented (and you know sex has nothing to do with it)
2. Your mind goes blank for several seconds and you stare blindly
3. Double-vision
4. Sudden behavior changes
5. Localized muscle spasm (my arm occasionally twitches)
6. Whole body muscle spasm
7. Twitches (Like I said)
8. Tics
9. Hallucinations
10. Changed hearing
11. Smell sensations (Occasionally my tea smells like fish oil)
I don't have enough room to list all the symptoms. Epilepsy is a complex disorder with symptoms that can change as easily as a woman changes her mind.
But if you have been diagnosed with epilepsy you can't ignore it. The beast will grab you sooner or later. You won't see it coming till after you wake up on the floor and see people staring down at you in fear.
Or after you wake in an ambulance and find yourself strapped to a gurney as I did after the car accident. I'll never forget the frightened look on the paramedic's face.
My nephew, who had a cold before the car accident, jokes my 'shock treatment' helped to rid him of his cold. I can laugh because I can't remember the accident. I'm grateful he's able to make a joke about it.
I nearly silenced him forever.
Jenny Harker is an experienced writer, gardener, and far too experienced epileptic.
Copyright Jenny Harker, 2005