Tag: People with epilepsy

Dealing with epilepsy

Living with epilepsy – how bad it is

Codrin PO

Quite a while back, I realized that living with epilepsy has multiple sides to it, and I kept thinking (and complaining here) of just one: just my point of view as a person with epilepsy.

But there is something else to think about: how it affects the people around you. I got a harsh reminder a few weeks ago when I had a seizure at home with just my 7yo kid around. I taught him the procedure: go on my phone, click on the emergency call and call the emergency numbers I set up there (my neighbor across the street and his mother).

He did that; he even called my neighbor on my desktop WhatsApp app because the laptop was open when all happened. He left voice messages to people, opened the intercom in the building and let my neighbor in.

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Blog

Legitimate questions and 2020

Codrin PO

I don’t have a lots of followers for this blog or a huge number of view – about 150-200 views/day. And most of these go to a post about humanity that I wrote in 2013.

However, how I wrote in my previous post, I get questions from time to time. Some stupid, some not. Some from lazy people (as someone commented to my post), some from people who just stumbled upon my blog and don’t care about epilepsy.

At the beginning of each year, I take some time to go back through the questions I got. With 2020 being a hard year on all of us, some of the “good” questions were a bit weird.

Here you go my top three favorites:

  1. What is epilepsy and why should I care about it? My (honest) response: you shouldn’t care if you don’t know anyone who has epilepsy: friend, family, colleague. Epilepsy is a disorder, not a disease so the only thing you could do is be there and be a friend that person.
  2. Why are people afraid of people with epilepsy? My (abridged) response: I’m not sure what you mean. I only met people afraid of someone having a (grand mal) seizure while they are with them. But that’s it. Unfortunately, I see that people actually consider those with epilepsy as inferior because we can’t do some things aka drive (for some of us), drink (I wouldn’t drink if I didn’t have epilepsy) etc.
  3. Is epilepsy dangerous? My response: yes, it is for some of us. For epileptics, imagine having a seizure in the middle of the street. It doesn’t matter if it’s grand mal or absence seizure. You could get hit by a car. For non-epileptics, it’s mostly the scare: imagine you are in a car with someone having a seizure (grand mal). If s/he sits next to you, you might lose focus/attention and get into an accident. But 95% of the time there is no problem.