Author: Codrin PO

Some guy who writes about what comes to mind, but mostly about epilepsy and his private life.
Blog · Dealing with epilepsy

My Chinese seizure

Codrin PO

Back in 2014, I attended a series of meetings in China at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS). This was doing for multiple reasons in which I will not go right now.

I had an excruciating long flight departing from Brussels with a stopover in Turkey and onwards to Beijing. Overall, with the stopover included, it took about 15 hours. I slept a little in the plane, but the space between the seats was minuscule. Out of the 9 hours it took to reach Beijing, I slept, perhaps, 1 hour.

Going forward, I reached my hotel (the Friendship Hotel) at around 6 am and had a meeting with my friend Bi at 9 am (see photo below: she’s the one in the middle). In between, I took a shower and opened up my laptop for a quick chat with my wife to tell her that I’m ok. Everything went smoothly: chat, meeting, the entire day in fact. Continue reading “My Chinese seizure” →

Dealing with epilepsy

Wishing to have a seizure is interesting

Codrin PO

Back during my Bachelor studies, I had to seizures in the first semester: one in the IT lab and the other before my applied math exam. I think I already wrote about them, but anyway… I had two more colleagues (from a different specialization) who also had epilepsy and seizures in that first semester.

One of the things I realized is that some people are using their seizures to get their way through life. I witnessed someone faking a seizure (the aura part anyway) in order to pass an exam. Easy to say she passed the exam.

But, after discussions on epilepsy forums, I realized some people actually wish sometimes to have a seizure. I was curious why so I “studied” myself before and after a seizure. Continue reading “Wishing to have a seizure is interesting” →

Blog · Dealing with epilepsy

How I avoided seizures

Codrin PO

August 5th was an “interesting” day. I went on vacation with the family back home in Romania for about 1 month. You can take a month off when you are unemployed.

The first thing that we had to do is a passport for the baby. With some help from friends and family, we had a quick appointment at the passports service.

Immediately after this, I had a feeling. I started shivering, getting dizzy and it was difficult to stay on my feet. I took control back and avoided a seizure. I mentioned this in another article. It was a simple breathing and relaxation exercise. Continue reading “How I avoided seizures” →

Dealing with epilepsy

Trouble sleeping

Codrin PO

It’s been a few years since I slept without waking up in the middle of the night or without a headache the next day. This excludes the days when I “slept like a baby” because I was extremely tired after working, shopping, travelling and other stuff like that.

It turns out that one of the “secondary effects” of epilepsy (the disorder) is having sleep disorders. What’s odd about this is that the lack of sleep or a really disturbed sleep can cause seizures. This is also my case, my seizures being provoked by fatigue and stress.

The second thing is that anticonvulsants should have a “sleeping” effect on the body, but most of the times it ends up in giving you a constant state of fatigue like you are sleepwalking (or sleep-running the marathon) each night.

Just wondering: are sleeping pills a solution? My neurologist recommended me to take a sleeping pill once in a while, but I didn’t want to. I’ll get back to you on this.

Dealing with epilepsy

My deja-vus and what they really are to me

Codrin PO

Déjà-vu literally means “already seen“. There are moments in life when a person has the impression that what they do, see, hear already happened before. Usually, it’s just an impression.

Scientific explanation for déjà vu: there is a split-second delay in transferring information from one side of the brain to the other. One side of the brain would then get the information twice – once directly, and once from the ‘in charge’ side. So the person would sense that the event had happened before.

Continue reading “My deja-vus and what they really are to me” →