What I wish I’d known before my housemate had a seizure.
Being woken up at 7AM this week to the sound of one of my housemates panicked voice has been a memory I haven’t been able to shake for the past few days. All he could say was that he thought my housemate was having a seizure and before I knew it, I was upstairs standing in her room in a state of shock. I have not been prepared or equipped to deal with a situation like that. I had heard all the horror stories associated with seizures and everything that could go wrong and in that moment, any small amount of knowledge I had on what I was supposed to do, went out my brain.
I can remember just standing there shouting at my housemate to call an ambulance and trying to get any sort of signs of recognition from my friend on the floor. She had rolled over and spilt the tea she had left so carefully on the ground. I kept turning to my other housemate asking him what to do, what do you do in these situations? I tried to get close to her to try and make sure she wouldn’t hit the radiator near her head, but I couldn’t get close to her and a part of me didn’t know whether or not I should try and hold her down. I decided not to.
When she stopped moving and we finally got someone on the phone to talk us through what to do, she wouldn’t respond to anything but her name. I sat talking to her for about twenty minutes as we waited for the ambulance to arrive so that she wouldn’t lose consciousness. At that point in time, the only thing I could think to talk about was Donald Trump and everything he had done wrong in the past week. When the medic arrived, she checked my friend over and said due to procedure we’d have to take her to the hospital. I spent 15 hours that day at the hospital with her, getting repeatedly asked what happened and told I did a good job. My friend doesn’t remember anything up until getting to the hospital. All I can think is that I didn’t even do anything but panic. I didn’t deserve any praise or admiration for what I did. She was kept for two days and recently discharged.
Since then she has had an MRI scan and told it could potentially happen again. That’s why I’ve decided to find out things that could help if the situation happens another time. Hopefully if you end up in a similar situation, this could help you too.
1. Do not panic. Panicking shuts down your mind and you need to be alert. Stay calm.
2. Immediately call the emergency number of your country.
3. Make sure to try and time how long the seizure is. This is a question they tend to ask at the hospital and helps when trying to diagnose what happened.
4. Move away all objects around the person so they don’t injure themselves.
5. If the person having a seizure is on the ground, attempt to move them on their side so that any saliva or vomit can leak out.
6. This is something that many people are unaware of in this situation, but do not put anything into the person’s mouth during a seizure and do not try and hold them down.
7. After the seizure check if they have any injuries.
8. If you were unable to move them to their side during the seizure, move them afterwards.
9. Do not give food or water to them until they are fully conscious and stay with them until they are, as more often than not they will wake up very confused and sleepy.
I have never had the feeling of someone being so dependent on me to the point where if I did something wrong or made a wrong judgment, something extremely horrible could have happened. I’m still worrying about that but knowing these few tips have also calmed me down. Gaining this knowledge can only help me in future situations and possibly in other situations that I might be involved in.
With thanks to Eloise Douglass
