Tuesday 13 May 2008

Post Seizure event

Hi
For those who live with a seizure/epilepsy condition, you will know that it is common to fall into a deep sleep immediately following a Tonic Clonic fit. My daughter used to do this every time. She would sleep for a good hour or so.

My 23 year old son, who has also had grand mals, is a bit more special in that his day to day life seems to be spent, some would say, in his 'right brain' and he quite visibly shares his day to day life with his daemon. This manifests a bit like a kind of Jekyll and Hyde - mostly he is gentle and kind and polite but sometimes, for no obvious reason, he will be Hyde... an angry, aggressive and distracted individual from another world, talking at people who we do not see. (Add to this the autism condition.)

Well, what is this leading to, I hear you ask? The connection is that he had a grand mal seizure last week.. his first for nearly 3 years. Yes, you probably understand our initial emotion of great disappointment that this should happen when we were becoming optimistic of reducing his medication.

Once his shaking stopped, his body reacted the way we are used to... he clearly wanted to fall into a deep sleep... BUT.. he did not. Something in him fought it off. So we then witnessed behaviour that I believe few will have seen. It was astonishing - so much so that once he was sitting down, safely, we started filming him so that we could share it with his psychologist.

I'm sorry that I cannot show his movie to the world, but I can tell you that for a good hour we watched a person whose left, 'dominant' brain seemed to have switched off, but whose body was being driven by something else. His language seemed like English but he had a lot of new words and concepts, and 'Hyde' was very prominent. And as he started to 'come out of it', the extreme personality gave way to a lot of fast 'switching', mumbling and confusion.

I have yet to decide for myself if what we saw was anything unusual, maybe connected to Eidolons and Daemons - or was it just a well documented, normal (as opposed to paranormal) response? Ed

6 comments:

Karl Le Marcs said...

Hi Ed,
Sorry to hear that Mark has had a bad episode recently, especially as the last few weeks and months have been so promising.

If it helps your concerns, what you describe is a similar scenario to those seizures I have witnessed, and have written on, amongst those living with Autism to those living with Severe Schizophrenia.

If we accept the temporal time delay between what is empirically experienced (in totality) and what is then presented to our consciousness (the minimum requirements) then atypical brains (such as Mark's and my dear friend Aiden *Hi Aid*, who has had very similar episodes to your son) may at times present the WHOLE world empirically to the Eidolon which is overwhelming.

The Doors of Perception are not just wide open, they are off their hinges.

I hope some of this helps with your concerns but as ever, you are very welcome to email me and we can discuss it further.

Ed said...

Thanks Karl... we can add this to the growing agenda for the next meeting at the watering hole...
Cheers
Ed

Anthony Peake said...

ED: Sorry to haer about Mark's relapse last week. Must have been very stressful for you all. However it does seem that the post-seizure events prove what you and I have long suspected with regard to how your son's brain is compartmentalised.

I would be fascinated to see the video that you took - together with the one of your son in the cafe these two may be classic evidence of ITLAD.

It will be interesting as to what your psychiatrist makes of this.

johar said...

Hi Ed,

The postictal footage you took sounds fascinating. It's great that you have this awareness of what could be happening with regard to daemon dialogue as it could be happening to others and they just don't know what they are witnessing. It's extremely unusual for people to stay awake after a grand mal, I know from watching my mum go through it and as a nurse. The brain storm is completely exhausting isn't it so for your lad to stay conscious and speak is really unusual.
Thank you for sharing this with us Ed and I hope your son has recovered and is well. Do you have any clue what triggered the seizure after such a long period?

Ed said...

Hi Johar...

Just spotted your comment on this post. Thanks you for your thoughts for my lad. Yes, it is sad and disappointing that he should have a seizure after 2 clear years.

Good news is that He has recovered to his pre-seizure state and maybe slightly better in terms of clarity of understanding. Note that I will not be letting the neurologist use it as an excuse to increase his medication!

2 days ago he said to me, rather out of the blue, "Am I back in the universe now, dad?" Of course my answer was, "You ARE the universe and I am learning how to join you there." He frequently has such profound thoughts.

And thinking back to that post-seizure experience, it was interesting how my son could not speak English for a few minutes... and used words and sounds that i had never heard, almost like some foreign language. And i could also see the frustration (and anger) in him as he struggled to communicate with us. It was like his thoughts were clear to him but it came out all wrong! Tony and I talked about this today. It amused us to think that here we have a daemon, with near infinite universal wisdom, but who cannot even ask for a cup of tea! But why would he ever need to ask? Unless his Eidolon buddy decides to go AWOL, like after a seizure, but then refuses to lie down! Must have been a frightening experience to be in complete charge of a human!

I wonder if others have been able to recall what they felt and thought after a grand mal?

Just a postscript on this...
My son's long term cocktail of conditions makes it hard for him to interact with people in a way we understand. Karl's remarks about the doors of perception made me think of the analogy of finding yourself bobing around in the sea with large waves washing over you and at the same time tying to have a sensible conversation with someone on the phone! It is no wonder that autistic folks can seem to babble confused and mixed up language and occasionally become psychotic with the constant frustration of being swamped whenever they try to have a conversation!

"So how DOES the world work, then, Dad?"

Cheers
Ed

Karl Le Marcs said...

Ed:
You and I need to talk as I’m sure you will quickly see the implications within my theory I am working on (“Collapsing the Consciousness Wave”), with regards to Mental Health and especially Mark’s Autism.

I will hopefully be getting across to Liverpool again in a couple of weeks so we should get together for an ale and a chat.