When things happen sometimes, you have to stop for a moment to wonder whether what you are experiencing is real or not.
I had stepped out of the shower, tired from staying up too late, and shivering from the transition from hot water to cold air. As I towelled myself dry, I blinked and in the moments where my eyes were closed – a dark, cartoon-like face jumped at me, teeth bared, and intent on frightening the life out of me.
It wasn’t real: it was a rare occurrence linked to the epilepsy. It wasn’t the first time faces and images like these have appeared. I have mentioned it to my neurologist before and although she had never heard of it she reckoned it could be epileptic in nature due to them normally occurring when I am tired.
This particular day however was the worst they have ever been. Every time I closed my eyes whether in thought or from blinking, faces would jump out at me. At one point I almost fell over as they kept appearing – and it is incredibly difficult to stop yourself from blinking, especially when you tell yourself not to. It’s hard for people who haven’t experienced this to imagine what I’m talking about – and as much as I call myself an aspiring writer, it’s difficult to describe them adequately.
However The Mother found an article in an epilepsy newsletter something which sounded very like what I was experiencing. Unfortunately I don’t have the newsletter with me at the moment, but it was something along the lines of “severe hallucinations of animals or people, receding or approaching, possibly linked to photosensitivity”. It was reassuring to read that at least I’m not making it up.
Has anyone else ever experienced something similar?
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5 comments:
...when i have aura's a lot of the time i see silhouettes of people standing near me but when i turn around or try and focus they aren't really there...
not quite scary faces, but not the most comforting thing ever...x
- Dave
Why do you refer to your mother as "The Mother"?
Dave - do you get them before "big" seizures?
Nuri - On my other blog, where I write the most, I give all the people in my life 'character' names to keep their real identities private. Mostly I come up with random names, but seeing as The Mother is my mum, and in real life I call her by her first name I chose to call her The Mother. I also have The Father, Brother Number One and Brother Number Two.
Yes, i do. maybe 5yrs before i was diagnosed (left temporal lobe), i was apparently having absence seizures and as i would come out of them, i would get flashes of people roughly 40m ahead of me.Complete, standing in different poses and unique.
Since I started having 'larger' full blown seizures, One of the only memories i have of the dark spaces during them are of scary faces. In fact, its about the only thing i do remember about the down time. Scary- fangs and whatnot, but cartoonish at the same time. Scary, but not frightening in other words. Absence seizures afterwards keep these faces as a theme for some time.
I'm late to this blog entry but am searching for more information about these kind of seizures and what part of the brain they come from.
Yes, I get very fast flashes of faces that appear. They start off nonscary, then progressively get scarier until a very large very evil/demonic looking one pops out, and then is followed by my hand shaking.
Scares the poo out of me each time.
Sometimes it's just mouths/teeth, sometimes its eyes, but mostly it's very fast flashing images of whole faces.
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