Welcome to My Epilepsy! I wanted to write about the everyday life of someone with epilepsy. I also wanted to add a little humour, which I don’t think happens much when it comes to discussion of epilepsy. I’m only going to joke about myself, not the condition itself.
So……first I should give some background on why I am what I am. 1996 – Amsterdam – too much consumption of…stuff. Fell down on to the concrete, banged my head hard, and to cut a long story short, fractured my skull and several years diagnosed with what I was warned about by my first neurologist – epilepsy.
I had my first seizure at my then boyfriend, James’s, flat in Balmain in 2000. He called an ambulance and we raced to the RPA where they agreed yes there was a chance it could be epilepsy, but evidently you are not officially diagnosed until you have two seizures.
I was placed on medication and told I was not able to drive for 6 weeks. If I went six weeks without a seizure I could drive again. Those six weeks passed by very slowly, but happily seizure – free. On the first night of week 7 I jumped in my boyfriend’s car (a brilliant Holden EH) and drove down Darling Street Balmain. Then it happened. My second seizure.
And what a seizure it was. Picture this – a big blue Holden driving off to the left into a parked car, then veering back to the opposite of the road slamming into a parked police car (I got quite a few handshakes for that) then straight through the red light across Montague Street (Town Hall pub) before someone jumped into the car, pushed me across the bench seat (good old 50’s cars) and pulled over outside the pub. Oh how exciting for the pub dwellers! A drink driver!!!! The police were called, and pushed through the crowd to check out this naughty driver. I awoke and the first thing I recall is hearing someone (who, I don’t know, some pub person probably) call out, “oh those are epilepsy tablets”. So I guess they were going through my bag for ID and found those. So I wasn’t arrested.
BUT I was diagnosed with epilepsy, and had my license taken away. And that was the beginning of life as I know it today.
Oh except a few changes like, new boyfriend who became a husband, several different houses, many different types of drugs, birth of a daughter, new job and starting next Friday – unemployment! And no, the unemployment is not related to epilepsy. Just time to move on.
So these days, as in the year 2012, I have at least one seizure a week, and these seizures are called complex partial seizures. They vary so much and can be, if you can believe me, very funny. I have to go, but will continue tomorrow, so stay tuned…
my-epilepsy 
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