Epilepsy 101

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder where abnormal brain activity from damage of the nervous system causes seizures.  

A trigger causes electrical brain activity from the damage in the nervous system which creates a  disturbance warning a seizure is about to happen. The electric cells move from the nervous system and travels to the brain and shocks it. The cells work as neurotranslators to fight the shock while a seizure is happening and they return back to normal once the seizure is over. These cells are so powerful that when you have a seizure, the entire body uses ALL of its energy and that's why its normal to feel tired after a seizure.  

I once was in a very hot classroom and heat is one of my triggers. Although I was having water, I still couldn't handle it. The abnormal cells got the sign something was wrong and my body starts shaking because I'm losing control of everything. All a sudden,  they travel up to shock my brain,  my body starts to lose balance and then I tend to fall. 

The abnormal brain activity takes over my entire body during the seizure and I tend to kick, scream, and cry while the cells are causing the electric activity.  When the electrical brain cells stop communicating,  regular cells come back and my body becomes tired. Eventually, I fall asleep and stop shaking, which shows the seizure is over. Finally, my cells go back to normal and I fall asleep from losing all of my body's energy. 

There are different kinds of epilepsy and seizures. My epilepsy is in the occipital lobe in my brain where vision is controlled. I'm unable to look on the right side without moving my head. This happened from brain surgery in 2007. I have refractory epilepsy and have partial and grand mal seizures.  

Epileptics also react differently depending which part of the brain their epilepsy is located at. This might be hard to understand,  but I hope this epilepsy 101 has given you at least the idea on what epilepsy is.