Comments on: Stairway to loving

By: Jennifer R. Ewing

Jennifer R. Ewing — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:03:11 +0000

When I was younger, I experienced the feeling of my body having the seizure while my mind remained perfectly clear. I could not control my body movements at all, but I remained aware of my surroundings–sights, smells, conversation, etc–for the duration of the seizure.
To this day, I can walk *up* a flight of stairs with little difficulty (assuming there’s a railing nearby), but coming *down* the stairs I either hold on to the railing for dear life, or put my arms out to my sides, almost as if I’m preparing to take flight. My neurologist tells me that doing so “shifts my center of gravity”.

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:07:27 +0000

Regarding patients learning to control their seizures: I read an interview a couple years ago with Neil Young where he reported that later in life he learned to suppress an oncoming seizure by meditating in one way or another. I can’t remember the details of exactly how he focuses his thoughts, or even if he gave details.

By: thewaltonfirm

thewaltonfirm — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:48:41 +0000

My seizures were often triggered by computer games. I don’t believe it was a flashing-light phenomenon though, rather I believe there was a specific pattern or type of thinking that would cause me to go into seizure. I say this because all occurences of a seizure were with games that involved an immersive type of problem solving, and happened more frequently with slower-paced strategy games than with high frame-rate shooters (I played several genres of games about equally). Civilization, Starcraft, Stronghold, MDK, WOW, and Sins of the Solar Empire are among the games that I have been playing when a seizure occurred. (I had 11 or 12 grand mal seizures over the course of about 8 years, it has been about 18 months since my last)