My Childhood: Epilepsy Attack

One day, while playing in the field during recess, my sister began acting strangely. She started shaking violently, her arms flailed randomly, her head moved strangely. It seemed to me that she was under the control of some malevolent puppet-master, only I couldn’t see the strings.

An adult ran over to her, I think it was the principle. He grabbed her, and set her on the ground. She continued to flail around randomly, her teeth beginning to chatter loudly, her eyes closed.

The principle forced her jaws open and stuffed something in her mouth. I later found out this was to keep my sister from swallowing her tongue. He yelled to someone else, who returned shortly with a blanket. He covered her frail little body, and told all of the children who were crowded around to find something better to look at.

I stayed with my sister, although I was scared to death. I didn’t understand what was happening, I had no idea what was wrong with her.

Eventually my parents arrived at the school. The principle apparently had some experience with this kind of thing before, because he told them to bring my sister to the hospital immediately. They left with her in their arms, tears running down my mothers face.

My mother later explained to me, a very frightened young man, what was wrong. My sister had a problem known as epilepsy, which is a disorder of the nervous system that causes convulsions. There was nothing wrong with her, it was just that sometimes a spark in her brain didn’t quite fire properly, and she went into convulsions. My mother told me years later that this was not the first time that Belinda had an epilepsy attack.

My sister apparently had a sudden and totally unexpected grand mall seizure in the middle of the playground. She has no memory of the events immediately prior to the seizure, and for several days afterwards. Apparently, that is one of the symptoms - short term memory loss.

The doctors started her on some medication, which seemed to work reasonably well, since I don’t remember witnessing any more seizures. She was intermittently plagued with this problem until college, when medication, combined, I’m sure, with the love from the man she later married, cured her of this affliction.

The story of how Ken met Belinda, accepted her epilepsy, and fell in love with her is quite inspirational. To this day, years after they were married, Belinda and Ken have the happiest marriage that I’ve ever seen.