What is Childhood Epilepsy like?

My son who is a nurse defined Childhood epilepsy as "Blunt Trauma Epilepsy" which is the only kind you normally grow out of by age 15 or 16.

My experience looking back now was that I was climbing around Chilao(Angeles Crest Hiway in Mountains near Los Angeles) in the rocks with my Dad and fell back and likely got a concussion around 1956 or 1957. I started throwing up because I had slipped on a small rock while standing on a big rock and fell backwards onto my head by accident.   I was almost unconscious with a whole lot of pain and dizziness. I estimate I fell about 8 feet backwards onto the back of my head. My father said, "Get up!" Because he knew we were too remote for him to carry me back to his truck and people in those days either walked out or died in situations like this then. There really were not rescue helicopters much back then and if there were they were prohibitively expensive.

Within about one year or so I started to have seizures while I was dreaming asleep in my bed at home.

I would be dreaming and then a black hand in my dreams would be strangling my throat and I would be fighting for my life and go into a seizure. My first one was on a Sunday morning about 6 am and I was 10 years old. I had gotten up at 4 am to deliver the Glendale News Press on my bicycle and when I came home after wrapping and delivering my newspapers on my bike (about 200) I went back to sleep and had a bad dream and woke up with my head in my mother's lap. She told me I had had a bad dream and just told me to go back to sleep. My parents didn't believe in doctors much then unless someone had to be stitched up or to set a broken arm or leg.

I didn't know I was actually having seizures for about a year or two as they got worse about every 6 months or so in my sleep. My son tells me it is from a concussion where the bone is pressing up against the brain in a certain way. But, when it is called childhood epilepsy what that actually means is the cranium grows with the child into adulthood and the pressure begins to release around 15 or 16 years of age which is what happened to me.

A seizure (within two years) was probably the most terrifying thing I have ever had to endure. I would equate it to being murdered by someone either strangling you slowly or taking a knife and stabbing you down into your brain from the top of your head. So, that's how I would describe a seizure, (as being murdered). I would come out of a seizure and be in pretty deep shock and be sitting on the floor shaking for about an hour or so because of being so traumatized. And even after the trauma wore off and I stopped shaking the psychological ramifications were terrible.

One night I felt one coming on in my dreams (I was about 14 and this was the very worst one) and I panicked and tried to get up and run out of a beginning seizure and ran into my door to my bedroom which was ajar which broke my nose and knocked me out. I woke up to my head on the floor and laying with my head in a pool of blood from my broken nose. There was a butter knife in my mouth as my father was trying to force my mouth open so I didn't choke on my tongue.

He said to me, "You've got to get some religion under your belt son, or you are going to die!" I took what he said seriously and started going to church about 4 times a week at that point. By the time I was 15 I asked God to come live with me in my body so I wouldn't die. He hasn't ever left! As soon as I did this I never had another seizure again. Within a few months of this I became very handsome and women started chasing me. I knew they were after God who lived in my body with me now. At first I was angry but finally I realized, "It as pretty stupid to think like this." If women loved me because God lived in my body with me why shouldn't I just enjoy this blessing? It took me about 1 year to grow up enough for this point of view to really sink in. At 16 I started dating a girl who was 21 from my church.

What the doctor I started going to for epilepsy was wanting to give me was Phenobarbital which is what they gave epileptics then. But my father refused for me to take that because of studying what it did to one's long term health. So, I only had mind over matter to survive this and God and a B-Complex shot in my butt from the doctor.

So, I learned how to be very aware of what I was feeling and sensing. There is what is called "An Aura" that usually precedes a coming seizure which is sort of an "Altered way of feeling". Some people who had seizures used to do things like Scream to let vent the electricity from their brain before a seizure so it didn't happen. Other people had sex alone or with someone to avoid a seizure and this sometimes worked for people too that I met along the way who had to deal with seizures.

I didn't really understand that my epilepsy was 'Blunt trauma epilepsy" until my son was becoming a nurse. What I did know as that it kept me out of the draft for the Viet Nam War. I always thought that it was strange that something that almost killed me also kept me out of the war and dying.

So, my point of view always has been, "The Lord Moves in Mysterious ways". So, when I turned 18 my father took me back to my doctor for epilepsy and he got me a 4F which means that I only could be drafted if the U.S. was attacked in an all out war.

But, the biggest change in me was in my intuitive abilities which had grown exponentially from age 10 to age 15 and now God living in my body with me. So, my experiences in a lot of ways remind me of the prophets in the old testament from about age 15 on. However, I came to realize religion is obsolete in this world era, so I encourage people to create their own personal connections with God, Life, the Universe and themselves. Because I see that as the future of life on Earth rather than organized religions. Organized religions help civilize societies and in some ways help prevent violence. However, we now need everyone to be brothers and sisters so we don't destroy the whole earth. So, at this point religion is counterproductive because it helps destroy earth rather than keep the human race alive when religions go to war with each other worldwide.  Unless people join together in a secular way that believe in God the human race is going to go extinct.