Living with fear in your mind. Part 1

I have not written a blog post for a while and over the next few blog posts you will realise why and I will take you on my journey over the past few months as well as a few years back to give you the bigger picture.

So firstly, let’s throwback to 20 years ago. It’s 1999 and I have a daughter of six months old. We are living in a 2 bedroom maisonette, our first home together, that we bought when I was pregnant and moved into in May 1998. Our daughter was born in September. One Saturday, I had a really bad headache, a headache like I’ve never had in my life. I thought if I go to bed early, when I wake up, it will be gone. I woke up on Sunday morning and it had. Great. Thought nothing more of it. Monday afternoon and we are about to take my car to my uncle’s garage to get something on it fixed. I tell my husband, I am just going to have a quick bath before we go.

Our bathroom door never had a lock on it since we moved in and never really felt the need for it. My hubby would often come in for a chat while I took a bath and vice versa. This particular day though, was not like any other. I started to have a seizure in the bath! If he had not been there, I would have drowned and that would have been the end of me…however he held me and let the water go down the plug hole.

I was taken to hospital as he’d called an ambulance. They did a few checks like ‘what day is it?’, ‘who’s the prime minister?’ That kind of thing and said ‘everyone has at least one seizure in their life’ and sent me home.

Sadly, not long after, I had another seizure and one in the actual reception of A&E. They kept me in…I was there having numerous scans and tests, including a lumber puncture. The seizures began to become more frequent. I was moved to the National hospital in London for more tests and more scans. Seizures became 2-3 minutes apart and they wanted to put me into a coma. My hubby said he would think about and discuss it with my mum etc. He didn’t want to let them do it.

That evening they tried a new drug on me, it’s called Phenobarbital and is apparently the cheapest drug available. It completely changed me and began controlling the seizures!! I had a blood clot on the brain which was causing the seizures. My hubby said when the nurse came back to work that morning she said she was scared to look round the corner to my bed as she didn’t think I’d make it through the night!!  My poor family are the ones who suffered the most as I was ‘out of it’ most of time!

I am on medication for life but have been seizure free for 9 years roughly.  Of course I live with it at the back of my mind as you never know when you could have one , but I try and live my life as normal and continue to always do so.  I do not let it rule my life.  I am grateful for each day.

I hope I have not bored you all too much and my next post will be fast forward 20 years to 2019 and what a year I’ve had so far.