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Epilepsy Through The Eyes Of A Friend

© Lina Jo Gilliland

I had very little experience with epilepsy before Terri became my roommate in 1995. When I was 11, I had gone to camp with a girl who had epilepsy, but she did not have any seizures while we were at camp. About a year later, a friend had a grand mal seizure at school. A girl from her class ran across the hall and told my teacher, "Anna's dying!" My class was told later that Anna was very sick and was in the hospital. We felt excluded and afraid. Anna told us the next day that she had had a seizure. A few years later my cousin had a partial seizure at church. We all thought she was playing a good game, but someone called an ambulance after discovering that she had urinated. After she got home from the emergency room, she slept for a couple of hours and was fine.

Terri told me that she rolled around during her seizures and that at times they were very violent. I thought I could handle it, but I was afraid the first few times she had seizures around me. I was not afraid of getting hurt. I quickly learned how to respond to her seizures without hurting either of us, keeping her hands away from her mouth but still giving her the freedom to move. I learned over the first few weeks how to recognize the onset of her seizures and help her get to a safe place. I learned to expect any of a number of seizure types and how to tell if the seizure might last a few minutes or 30 minutes. I learned that her seizures sometimes came in groups and how to recognize when she might have more than one.

I also learned that other people did not understand seizures. Some believed that her seizures were intentionally self-destructive, and one person told me that I did not need such behavior in my home and emphasized many times that he thought that Terri needed 24-hour psychiatric treatment. I wanted Terri to be accepted and to have a chance to build friendships and have a successful, happy life. I was afraid that other people would not accept her or me as her friend. As a general rule, we did not let the possibility of seizures keep us from doing most things. If Terri had a seizure in public, I and whoever else was with me calmly explained to people who asked if they should call an ambulance that she was having a seizure and that it would end shortly. Her seizures usually last less than

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