Newspaper Feature Story

Amanda Allison, The Harbinger
Shawnee Mission East HS (Prairie Village, Kan.)

Students with seizures live knowing that, any minute, one cold be shaking their world

Students in their seventh hour classes crowded about the front of their classrooms, some attempting to sneak out into the hall, through the doors and out of school. The minutes passes, 2:38, 2:39, and then the announcement bell sounded:

Uh, yes. Teachers and students, if you would please disregard the bells, disregard the bells please. Remain in your classrooms and wait until we come on again to release. Thank you, please disregard the bells, disregard…2:40 and no one leaves the classrooms.

In this semester alone, there have been two East students that have suffered seizures during school, leading to these time-freezing announcements. The school’s protocol when dealing with seizures is to limit chaos, resulting in lock-downs until an ambulance arrives or the victim is relocated to the nurse’s office. The effect on the school is brief. Though seventh hour lockdown may make students five minutes late to track, the one who has just undergone the seizure has to worry about it happening again. They have to worry about it for the rest of their life.

Voices in My Head

Freshman year was hard for her. The notes of Vivaldi’s Concerto in D Minor flew by and she kept missing notes. Must play it one time through for every note missed. One time perfectly, she thought to herself as she tied back her ash brown hair. So much…so much to do and done so perfectly…it has to be perfect.

She was going to get this music…if only her fingers would move faster, faster, faster. She put the viola back up to her shoulder but stopped short: lights were flashing in front of her. The room moved about her as she grew dizzy and disoriented. She sat down, thinking it would pass. Then the voices started. From within her head they yelled at her, screaming to improve. She couldn’t breathe and couldn’t get enough air. Senior Katie Hersh thought she was dying.

Her eyes closed as her body convulsed, then grew rigid. Three minutes later her mother was above here, turning her on her side so that she wouldn’t choke on her own vomit.

She had just experienced a seizure. Her first.

Hersh is just one of the 70 percent of people in the U.S. that suffer from sudden seizures but have not been diagnosed with epilepsy. She has suffered from five seizures in the past four years. The last two both occurred on April 14, following her Performing Arts Assembly.

Though her neurologist has been unable to diagnose her as epileptic, her seizures are classified as “epilepsy symptoms connected with mental activity” and are the most common type.

The brain is made of billions of nerve cells, or neurons, that electrically energize the brain as they communicate across a sensitive membrane called the nerve bridge. When those neurons act as transmitters, and fire excessively, a seizure ensues.

“It’s very unnatural,” Hersh said. “Your brain is telling you something but you don’t know what. CAT scans can’t answer questions because there’s nothing to answer. It’s all very strange to experience.

Brain activity is a mystery to doctors and scientists. Patients are typically diagnosed based on seizure type (i.e. nightly, black-out causing, brain injury related, etc.) and how often the seizures occur, but a significant number of seizures are brought on simply by stress. According to the National Epilepsy Foundation, 30 percent of the 180,000 new epilepsy cases every year begin in childhood, particularly around the teenage and adolescent years when stress is most prevalent. 90 percent of high school students with epilepsy will at one point suffer a seizure that is due to stress and exhaustion.

Just Let it Progress

3 a.m. July 2003. Ten-year old Chloe Fischgrund couldn’t sleep. Padding down the hall to her parents’ bedroom, she heard a noise, like a “moaning mummy,” coming from her older sister Avery’s open bedroom door.

Looking in, Fischgrund saw that the bed was shaking. She saw Avery’s eyes wide open and rolling about in her head. It was a seizure. Another one.

Upon entering the room, the Fischgrunds did the only things that could be done: they made sure that Avery’s head was not going to hit anything and they attempted to check the blood coming from her mouth. Other than that, they had to wait. Let the seizure pass.

Three hours later, Avery had another seizure. In the morning she could barely speak because her tongue was so swollen after having bit it so many times. Blood remained on her pillows and her head ached for some time.

Sophomore Avery Fischgrund was diagnosed as having convulsion seizures, or tonic-clonic epilepsy, following a visit to a neurologist. Her seizures occur typically in the late evening and early morning and when Fischgrund is especially exhausted. With this type, the one undergoing the seizure is unconscious the entire time.

“You can’t wake up. You just let it progress,” Fischgrund said.

She has undergone four seizures since 2003, three of them having occurred while at a sleepover. Like Hersh, Fischgrund has suffered multiple, painful seizures right in a row.

“I believe I ruined a pillow of [sophomore] Lora Joyce’s because of the blood from my tongue which I had bit [while seizing],” Fischgrund stated.

Realizing how serious the seizures were after that July night, the Fischgrunds decided to seek medication, but had to choose wisely. Some medications may cause brain damage and affect the female hormones more severely, resulting in possible infertility following puberty. Fischgrund chose Lamictal which required a two-year commitment with twice daily doses. Side effects have included weight gain and have left Fischgrund dependent on the anti-depressant found in the drug.

“You can tell when she’s skipped a dose, which has only been two or three times, because her energy just drops,” Avery’s mother Donna said.

That same mood stabilizer is found in Trileptal, the medication that Hersh has been on for the past year and a half. It has helped her with here depression, but when doses are skipped, seizures are again a possibility.

This July, Fischgrund’s two years will be up with Lamictal and she will gradually be weaned off of it. Her mother attempted to end her usage in March so that she would have a good month of driving following her 16th birthday, because policy states that for three months after ending the medication, Fischgrund will not be able to drive.

“Everyone else with disabilities can drive,” Fischgrund said. “My seizures are, I suppose, a disability, so what a deal!”

Hersh has been catching rides since she was diagnosed, but looks forward, with some caution, to the day that she can drive.

“The thing that bums me out the most is the driving aspect. I’m like a kid in that I can’t drive myself to work or college,” Hersh said. “I can’t have certain freedoms then as an adult.”

Looking Ahead

Taking to heart the fact that her first seizures were caused by the stress, Hersh had realized that not everything has to be perfect. Not every long-term homework assignment needs to be done within days of being assigned. It’s okay, okay she thinks to herself.

Though she works hard for good grades, she’s not as “OCD” as she was freshman year. Now in her senior year, and with graduation close, thoughts of her future and living on her own make Hersh nervous.

“It would take a lot for me to consider coming off my medication,” Hersh said. “If I knew that I was in a stable situation, with people whom I knew would catch me if I fell, literally, then yes.”

Each time Hersh feels a seizure coming on, she repeats to herself this phrase: It’s okay. You can handle it. And she can.