Last night for the first time in 5 years I had a seizure. It scared me because there are only 2 people I could think to call and I can't call them anymore.
To be honest, I really can't tell you what type of epilepsy I have. It was diagnosed when I was a child and my doctor made every attempt to minimize it because it could affect my getting a license despite the fact that there no way, no how, no chance of me ever having a seizure while awake. Mine only happened immediately before REM sleep.
I have some very specific things that can trigger a seizure but they're difficult to describe. One of the things is very specific photo-sensitivity. Certain visual patterns like the "seizure robots" website instantly bring on the auras. As soon as the pattern reaches a specific frequency they will start. Another one is if I am laying down in a dark room and there is a vertical light source (like a cracked open door) it will start the auras within minutes. Certain tactile sensations can trigger the auras or can combine with the previously mentioned triggers and make them worse. Simple tactile sensations like folding arms a certain way while laying down in a dark room. Even a girlfriend masturbating me caused the auras to start on one occasion. No, I did not tell her this.
Another trigger seems to be both a cause and an effect and is really hard to describe... Sometimes pondering mathematical or scientific concepts can trigger them. If the answer to something strikes me as absolutely incredible and almost unfathomable it can start the whole process. Once simply pondering the total number of electrons in the universe triggered me. It made me avoid Carl Sagan for a while :) Things involving mathematical and geometric recursion (both the same thing I guess) can do it. If the answer doesn't seem to have finality, it makes me loopy.
It used to be that there was no stopping the eventual seizure once the auras had started but as I grew older I learned that if I immediately began to focus my attention on something simplistic I would be fine.
Yesterday was a stress day. My depression and anxiety have been gone for a while so it wasn't that type of stress. I was pondering certain things said to me by a few people lately and the answers I was coming up with were not making sense. It's like adding 2 and 2 and coming up with 3. My brain overloaded and the auras started. I couldn't sleep. Laying there curled up under the blanket caused all sorts of sensations and there was the good old vertical line of line from a light coming through the window. Nothing helped after that.
After falling asleep the seizure began.
The seizures manifest themselves similar to something known as "night terrors." It is the feeling that you are in immediate mortal danger even though there is nothing around that could be causing it. It doesn't matter that I cannot see it, it's is just there somewhere and I feel it and if I don't get out of there I am going to die the worst possible way. It is absolute fucking terror like the worst anyone could ever imagine. Think of the scariest horror movie scene you have ever watched and multiply it by a million.
As a child, on a few occasions I ran straight out the front door in the middle of the night and ended up blocks away. This is something you should not be doing in Detroit. Most times I would go to the closest "comfort person" and they would console me and I would fall back to sleep and be fine the next day. Most times this was my mother and on a few occasions my dad. When they happened again a few years ago, I called Laura in hysterics and could only reach her answering machine. Last night I apparently tried to call Liz but it didn't go through, maybe because the brain was still working enough to know that I can't call her anymore.
It is so weird because I am aware of everything that is going on around me but I am also very aware if the acute danger that I sense I am in.
This is the first time in 5 years that it went this far and before that the last time was in my early 20's.
I hope it's a long time before it happens again.