Epilepsy

Or give them a martini mixer.

I have a rather mild form of epilepsy. I don't shake, but instead I kind of freeze up for varied amounts of time. I was diagnosed with it after being tested because I ran a red light and smashed into another car while having a seizure.

One of our dogs has it.

You don't see it coming. He'll all of a sudden just start rapidly shaking, foaming out the mouth, and he goes stiff. Sometimes he'll lose control of his bladder, the clean up on that isn't fun.

It takes awhile for him to come back "to reality" after it happens. He'll be staggering about, whimpering, thinking he did something wrong because he can smell his urine.

This just came out of nowhere too. He just started having them about a year ago and we've had him for about four or five years.

I had a fellow classmate in grade school that had seizures. Basically, you lie them down, support their head and limbs and give them something to bite down on. Just make sure they don't flail about and hurt themselves.

I'm sorry, but that was funny.

Like Owen, I have a mild form of epilepsy that's completely controlled by medication. Unfortunately, the cool side effects I wished for as a kid (flight, x-ray vision) never manifested. Instead, I got the power of drowsiness.

That's a power!...sort of, you can...sleep really, really well.

Was seeing a girl with mild epilepsy once. Really difficult pulling off something like that when each of you lives about an hour and a half away by car and one of you is medically prohibited from driving.

When I was a kid I was at Disneyland standing in line for Space Mountain and the guy standing in front of my family had a seizure and fell right on top of my mother.

It took years before they could convince me to get on that ride.

My dad also has a mild form (he had a seizure one day at work and broke his shoulder falling on his desk), but he can keep his drivers license as long as he takes the medications.

My oldest niece and I have different forms of epilepsy. I have focalized seizures, which in my case means my left hand shakes uncontrollably when I extend it for too long. She has a type of epilepsy that's sort of like what Lisa was describing: she basically freezes and her eyes lose focus.

Concerning treatment, we both take anti-seizure medications. Like others have mentioned, the main side effects are drowsiness and vertigo. As long as it's not too severe, having access to a good neurologist is pretty sufficient for dealing with it.

Was diagnosed with this in 1989 after a car accident in 1988, never really proven if the two were linked.

I had no idea anything was wrong until one morning I wake up in the hospital surrounded by my parents. Note to those who have experienced this, don't sleep in the nude.

I had a few more episodes like this; I would go to sleep, wake up, my muscles would burn and ache and I would have no memory of the seizure.

I was eventually given some meds to control these episodes. I have not had a seizure since 1991. I quit taking the meds in 2006.

The meds were worse than the epilepsy as it almost nearly decimated my short-term memory, my long-term memory had its moments of not working, but both are getting better now. Surprisingly my school work didn't really suffer, although my retention for info did take a hit, but no signs of that now. My mom always warned me about the flashing lights triggering an episode, but nothing ever happened, although I used to tease friends, an homage to Fred Sanford by having a "fake" attack.

My epilepsy was not debilitating in the least. It could have been had I had an attack while driving a car, but I took my meds religously and on schedule and now I would say I'm cured.

Throw'em in the bathtub with some soap and do the laundry.

I met a couple of cool chicks by having a fake "episode." Pity fucks are awesome.

See Control if you're interested in epilepsy. Makes you very sympathetic to the disease. Have a few epileptics in my family. I also used to the fuck an epileptic. Never forget one of the first times I slept over her apartment and she had a seizure and I thought she was dead. Scary disease.

Interesting.

Don't listen to any of the stone age bullshit about putting belts or wallets in a person's mouth if they have a full blown, grand mall (tonic-clonic) seizure. You're endangering their life by doing that. They're NOT going to bite their tongue off, but they might choke on vomit if you stick something in their mouth. Possibly turn person on their side to keep airway clear and prevent choking if vomiting occurs. DON’T restrain movement. DON’T put anything in the person's mouth. There's no stopping the seizure it just has to run its course.

On the lines of the milder seizures, one kind that seems to have been described here used to be called Petit Mal, but is now more commonly known as Absence seizures. That's where a person kind of spaces off and just stops for a short period. I had these as a kid and never really knew they were happening. It was just like I wasn't there for a second or two and the world kind of skipped. The medication sucked but it did eventually help. Many kids have this form of epilepsy and it often disappears with puberty (like with me.) Some people may have minor muscle twitches to signal these episodes, while others will not. Again, this is a situation where the seizure just has to run its course. There's no talking someone out or waking them up. This is a neurological disorder not psychological.

A seizure is a change in sensation, awareness, or behavior brought about by a brief electrical disturbance in the brain. Seizures vary from a momentary disruption of the senses, to short periods of unconsciousness or staring spells, to convulsions. All seizures are caused by the same thing: a sudden change in how the cells of the brain send electrical signals to each other.

There are tons of resources for epilepsy on the web like:
www.epilepsyfoundation.org
E-community message board
www.epilepsy.com
A great deal of visual information and videos
www.cdc.gov/Epilepsy/