My purpose for blogging was lost in the drama of life - I write to please - but I also write to educate, and that's my conviction for the purpose of this blog. If you want to understand more about epilepsy - from the perspective of one living with it - you've come to the right place. I'm still learning about epilepsy - I don't fully understand it either. There's plenty of unanswered questions and even doctors will admit that they don't know everything there is to know about it.
When you do online research, you'll see lots of assumptions and theories. Keep in mind that each person has a unique brain - and since the brain is where the problem is - epilepsy affects individuals in a multitude of ways. There are suggestions that caffeine, stress, hormones, computer screens, and flashing lights can cause seizures - but remember, its not the caffeine or the lights that cause them - rather, the caffeine and the lights create the conditions in which the already vulnerable brain will have seizures. Also, remember that epilepsy is not a disease, but a condition. It can't be caught, like a virus - and it can't be proven that its genetic, either.
How rude I am to not even introduce myself! =) I'm a newlywed and recent college graduate. I'm 24 years old, and I started having seizures when I was a teenager. Some people who start having seizures young grow out of it - I didn't. My situation is much like that of others: I had seizures for years, not realizing that they were actually seizures. I mistook my seizures for panic attacks - and I never did the research or told anyone. In fact, I wasn't concerned about it at all until I was in my last year of college. At some point, I began to have these seizures at least once a week. They had become such a normal part of my life that I didn't tell my roommate - after all, I didn't believe there was anything wrong. However, I do recall the attacks becoming more severe and frequent - so much so that at times, I'd literally pray myself out of them. With one of my average seizures, I'd often be in a light sleep - I will have barely drifted off into dream land when I'd start to go into the episode. The seizure starts with a racing thought - usually the same image over and over - as if an old CD were playing in my head and skipping at the same spot. Then, I'd feel dizzy and start hyperventilating slightly, as rushes of hot and cold go over my body almost simultaneously. My heart would be racing, and all the while, a feeling of intense panic would make my head feel as though it was about to combust.
Of course, my head never combusted (thankfully), but, the feeling of it was frightening enough. I started researching panic disorders and tried to make a link there. In fact, what I experienced was very much like a panic attack - although some glaring differences did exist. Like a panic attack, I experienced feelings of hot and cold, and I focused my mind on irrational feelings and thoughts. For instance, one night I had drifted off into a dream about bunnies, and when the seizure began, the same bunny flickered on and off in my head until I was literally afraid of the little brown, fluffy terror. I'd call that irrational. Yet, panic attacks often last longer and are focused on a stressful situation - not bunnies.
So, what causes the irrational visions? The answer would be neurons. Neurons sometimes misfire in the brain which can cause seizures. Neurons are the little messengers of the brain that make thinking (and moving) possible - but when they are triggered by something like stress or caffeine, in an epileptic brain, they will start firing too fast or out of order. This is only one part of the story, though. When someone goes into a convulsive seizure (grand mal seizure), its because every neuron in the brain gets out of whack. When one begins misfiring, its like a chain reaction throughout the brain. This is why people will often start acting strangely right before a convulsive seizure - because when the neurons misfire, they affect movement, speech, behavior, and thought. When the misfiring spreads throughout the brain, many different things can happen, but most commonly, a person will convulse as a result. I didn't have my first convulsive seizure until I came home from college at age 24. It was in June - a little over six months ago, that I had six seizures in one day. The first five were mini seizures, although just as serious - but the final seizure of the day was the grand mal. The seizure itself lasted about thirty minutes, but the convulsions only lasted about thirty seconds. You see, convulsions are a symptom of the seizure - not necessarily the seizure itself.
This is only the first of many blogs I intend to write about this. I hope that my experience will be of help to someone out there. If you or a loved one have been diagnosed with epilepsy - know that you're not alone. The key is to embrace the condition. I know that sounds strange. Our brains are so complex - and its because of our individual make up that some of us are prone to seizures and others are not. Nothing is an accident - and nothing makes us "broken."
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