My then-boyfriend had even made plans to visit me the next day to tour DC, yet he was stuck again sitting on a couch and helping me around. I hated being the “sick girl” more than ever. However, I saw myself being healthy one day and I wanted to have a normal life. Luckily, as I did everything in my power to live a healthier life, my seizures reduced in size and frequency. By the time I graduated GA State University in December 2009, given everything I had been through, I absolutely knew I wanted to be in the healthcare industry.
I started 2010 with my grad school acceptance letters in hand, ready to move on and start a new phase. By the end of that April, I was preparing to move to Pennsylvania to go to school at Carnegie Mellon University.When I moved, I was only having events once every 6-9 months and living a fairly normal life. It seemed that, they were just going to go away. I was actually very hopeful about this and was trying to stay as healthy as possible. Then, in my first month of grad school I had another seizure that landed me in the hospital for the second time. Again, the person that sent me to the hospital was a professor.
I only had made it to school that day because, despite the fact I felt awful, I called my new ex-boyfriend to pick me up and take me to school. After Dan saw what had happened, he was not happy and said it was the last time he’d take me to school after one of these things. When my professor saw me, he told me that he thought I should be taken to the emergency room. I was given the option of having the paramedics at my school come get me, or having someone take me to the hospital. Given this option, I called Dan up again, and he left work once again to drive me to the hospital. Later, the professor let me know that next time, I would not be given a choice. He would send the paramedics whether I had wanted them or not.I’ve never really thought about it, but if had I not shown up to school either times, I would have lied in bed and never would have sought emergency medical attention.
I would have had severely low blood pressure, hypoglycemia, and dehydration, and I would have been alone. Now that I understand the situation, I know that I was on the cliff of some very serious medical consequences. The only people to have ever forced me to seek emergent services were my professors, and I probably owe them my life.Once more, these past three weeks. After a year of having mild events every 9 months, something changed. I still don’t know what happened, but my brain began having a fallout beginning with seizures 2 nights in a row (which had never happened before to my knowledge). Because they were very mild, I brushed it off and went about my normal life. At this point, I have lived with seizures for 5.5 years and I just wanted a normal life if possible.
However, the day following my second seizure, I began feeling exhausted and went for a nap on one of my school’s large, comfy study room chairs. This is a rather normal occurrence for anyone who goes to my school. Heinz College has a website devoted to capturing pictures of sleeping students. Unfortunately for me, the next time I would wake up would be in the ICU.For the first time, I had a seizure while I slept during the day and it lasted for a minute and a half (based on what I was told). For people who know a thing or two about seizures, if people seize longer than a minute, it can be very serious. If I had stayed at home and had this seizure, I probably would have gone into a coma or died. I ultimately would seize over 20 times within the next couple days and no one would have been there to find me.
