I'm currently enrolled in Neurobiology, a course for graduate students. A few weeks ago we covered a case study in regards to epilepsy, and what happens in the brain before, during and after a seizure. It was interesting to find out how mechanical humans are just by having simple errors in the brain.

Epilepsy is not a new concept to me, my brother was epileptic for most of his childhood, but he eventually grew out of it. When he had seizures, my mother would respond as if he was dying, and her reaction struck the worst fear into my sister and I... but we never actually watched his seizuring.

Yesterday, in Neurobiology, I'm experiencing rapid action potentials in my mid back. (Action potentials are complicated to explain if you don't have biology and chemistry in your education background, but basically it's when a neuron fires electricity throughout the cell body in order to respond with other neurons). Almost like those weird twitches/throbbing you get in random places of your body, most likely your eyelid. I was curious as to why this random pulsing was happening, especially in my back. I then thought about the epilepsy case study, and thought perhaps I was going to experience a seizure at any moment.

After class I walk to my campus dining hall. I'm sitting alone in a booth, eating salad, and my friend Aaron walks in and we talk for a few seconds. He then sits at a table right next to mine. A few of his friends join him. I get up to refill my cup with water when I see Aaron tending to his friend, Jenny. She is having a seizure and I knew what it was right away, albeit never seeing one in my life, and I'm just completely aghast.

I watch for the entire process. The seizure lasted 2 full minutes... which I'm sure is longer than your average seizure. Aaron forgot to place something in her mouth so that she wouldn't swallow/bite her tongue, but it was too late. When the seizure was over, blood and drool spilled from her mouth, and her body automatically began to restore her breathing. She made odd noises, noises I had never heard from a person, they were almost like the sounds of an operating machine. Such noises made me think of how mechanical humans are, and for the first time I understood humans are animals, and not 'gods.' Of course, I already knew this before hand, but I never really 'watched' it before.

The entire dining hall occupants were curious and expressing concern/disgust at what was happening. Most people didn't even understand the situation. The employees did their best to keep her comfortable until the medics arrived. When Jenny came to, she became sick with the amount of blood she swallowed. She vomited copious amounts of mucus and blood, and people gagged. I didn't make any faces, and I watched with empathy, concern, and almost a scientific way of observation.

For the rest of the day I was plagued by the image of her body shaking and seizing, blood and drool exiting her mouth, and I couldn't help but feel for her. I began to cry, in public, because she was restricted to such a life threatening condition, and by life threatening I don't mean the seizure is going to kill her, but the environment she is in and if she is alone when it happens. I know there is medication that she and others with epilepsy are taking, but the seizures still happen.

I hope Jenny is doing okay.

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