Epilepsy Term Tuesday

Many who read this already know that I suffer from epilepsy.  In fact, I had my first grand mal seizure on my birthday 13 years ago but did you know that prior to that I suffered from simple partial seizures?  I was diagnosed with seizures three years prior when I was a freshman in college.  That was a HUGE blow.  I questioned everything.  I wanted to die.  I didn't want to be a burden on anyone, specifically my parents (I was still living at home.)  I found a journal that I kept during that time and just reading a few of the entries I sobbed.  It's only been in the last couple of years that I have felt comfortable telling people I have seizures.  I don't like when people look at me different or treat me different.  I am the same as you.  I just happen to have a RAM chip that is bad (it's a computer term.) When I was first told that I was having seizures the doctor described it like this:

Pretend that you are a computer.  Something happens and your computer crashes - that blue screen of death?  When you are able to reboot your computer sometimes files have been corrupted.  That's your brain.  It's the computer and the files are your memories and functions.  When you have a seizure it is the blue screen of death.  The memories are the files that sometimes are corrupted or misplaced.

Yep.  So that is how I was introduced to seizures.  I would frequently be talking to someone and stop mid-sentence either forgetting what I was talking about or what I was doing.  Just normal every day stuff.

Since my first seizures were "Simple Partial" seizures, I found the Epilepsy Foundation of Florida's Facebook page and am sharing their #TermTuesday and #TypeTuesdays image.