At Kettle we wanted to write about experiences, this is the single most valuable source of information in life so I felt it was important to share this for the benefit of other. The sum total of my medical knowledge is based on experiences and a first aid certificate (which i think is now expired!)
In a previous article we spoke with someone who suffers from this condition, in this case so do I and have done for quite some time.
Unpredictable
First of all, epilepsy can be unpredictable condition. There are limited warnings as to when any sort of episode or occurrence will take place, in the past I have spoke to a few people with similar goings on and they had a variety of pre warnings that something bad will happen. There was one where the environment he was in would adopt various shades of blue, another guy said he would experience a weird smell.
Personally over time the condition provided various different unusual events, although I had the misfortune of not experiencing them until I came out of the seizure/fit or however you want to describe it.
First aid steps for a convulsive seizure. Please take a minute to learn what to do and share. You never know when you might need it, and it could literally save someone's life. #epilepsy #EpilepsyAwareness #firstaid pic.twitter.com/OSmPmHjrTV
— Jessica Lucy Dover (@LLSJ_Jess) January 27, 2019
Main focus of this guide is how to deal with someone who takes a fit in front of you, the myth on which i want to dispel is that it is impossible to swallow your tongue, so remove that from your brain immediately. Second is don’t attempt to hold the individual down, they are most likely not in control of any of their extremities and it could result in personal injury to you. In terms of safety there are two main aims, the first one is to ensure the space they are in has to obstructing objects, what we want to avoid here is any form of head injury whatsoever. So if you have chairs, tables, people anything like that try create as much space as possible to ensure no concussions or any sort of head injury.
Recovery
The second and most important is helping this person’s recovery, when they come out of it have something nice ready for them, some water or perhaps a sugary drink, bit of chocolate something to aid the recovery, this is a weird thing that i experienced that if i had something like that the recovery would be so quick. When I was a kid my dad always used to ask me to count to 10 then to 0 again, this would help to indicate how coherent I was and how recovered I was.
If you experience Epilepsy there are plenty of sources of information on how to handle life, in Scotland you have the main supporters epilespyscotland.org.uk which has a vast collection of information and ideas on how to deal with condition most effectively. For the rest of britain you have epilepsy.org.uk which deals with the same sort of material. The most important thing to take care of here though is your own mind, so if you are having a hard time, its okay to get help. Don’t ever be afraid.
