The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated…

Seriously, there’s nothing more surreal than lying on a hospital trolley in an A&E with needles hanging out of your arms and one of those oxegen line deelys running under your nose and to get a text from a tabloid journalist of your acquaintance saying he’s heard you’re ill and asking if you are ok. That was Thursday lunchtime.

It takes a lot to make tyre fitters turn white but apparently that was how it panned out as it was in the Dun Laoghaire tyre fitting centre on Thursday morning that I had my first seizure in nearly two years. Next thing I knew I was coming round after bashing my left side and head against a concrete wall on my way down to the floor with the paramedics reassuring me I was fine and taking me all of 500 yards across the road to St Michael’s Hospital to give me the full once and twice over. They even turned on the siren, which always gives it a sense of occasion for me.

Fair play to all involved – it’s horrible to see a seizure happening I’m reliably informed (I have a lifelong friend who’s never recovered after seeing me have one in college), the tyre guys didn’t panic, the hospital staff were just the loveliest and kindest people possible and a load of questions, a few blood samples, a couple of x-rays and 5 hours of observation later I was on my way home to sleep for most of the next 18 hours. I have a few very nasty bruises down my right hand side but the lump on my head is almost totally gone now.

All “what brain?” jokes to the comment section below 🙂

It’s not the first time this has happened and it sertainly won’t be the last. I suppose the real reason for talking about it here is not to drag you through my dreary medical history but to give you some idea of how this whole process works for the next time you come across someone who either has epilepsy or is having a seizure. One of the main aims of me becoming involved with Brainwave in the first place was to shed light on the condition itself and make it something that people either talked more often about or were a bit more aware of.

Check 🙂

It also means I can’t drive for the next year but, as this is the fourth time I’ve been off the road for a year since I was 17, it’s something I’m well used to if not any less upset by. I know driving isn’t the be-all and end-all of everything but it’s certainly a huge part of most people’s lives today. It limits the places you can live, the things you do and, I don’t know about you, but I’m not comfortable being driven around as a passenger for every car journey I’ll make from now on.

But, as my mother-in-law is, correctly, fond of saying, “It could have been a lot worse”. The image of me presenting my show for the next three months with two broken arms or legs is sufficient incentive for me to continue to be as stoical about all of this as I have been since I was a kid…

Normal service has been resumed – thanks to Cormac for being so available to take up the reins at such short notice 😉

R