Living and Coping with Epilepsy, My Way - Softcover

Coles, Cara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1782797467 ISBN 13: 9781782797463

Verlag: John Hunt Publishing, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

You really can have anything you want out of life, no matter what. Living and Coping with Epilepsy, My Way is about the author's journey living and dealing with epilepsy, finding the law of attraction, and how her life has changed since then.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Cara Coles works as a healthcare professional. She lives in a busy household of dogs and other pets in Winchester, UK.

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Living and Coping with Epilepsy, My Way

By Cara Coles

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Copyright © 2014 Cara Coles
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78279-746-3

Contents

This Is Me, 
What Changed, 
Accepting Your Illness, 
The Project, 
My Wishes, 
Dream Big, 
What We Attract Into Our Lives, 
Let Your Imagination Run Wild, 
Should We Tell The World About Our Wishes?, 
Who We Are, 
Don't Listen, 
Out With The Old And In With The New, 
Give Thanks, 
Take Time Out To Relax, 
Say It As You Believe, 
Things Start To Change, 
Life Is Now, 
Laughter, 
Forgiveness, 
Random Acts Of Kindness, 
Stop, 
Choices, 
The Project To Date, 
Negative Moods, 
Situations, 
How Much Work Do We Do?, 
Allow Time, 
Go With The Flow, 
Believe, 
Never Ever Say Never, 
Final Thoughts, 

CHAPTER 1

This Is Me

Like a lot of people I worked hard and played hard. I worked all the hours I could so that I had money to do all the things I wanted. I thought I was quite happy plodding along with my life, I thought I had my life all mapped out in front of me, but things were about to change.

I was a strong person, someone that could take on anything that life threw at me. I thought I was in control of everything: control to me was good. If I had control of what was going on, nothing could go wrong, but I was soon to find out I was mistaken. There are things in life that are beyond our control.

I was 36 years old, and life was good, a bit of a struggle at times but good, I had control. But it only took a matter of weeks for all this to change and for me to become someone that was:

Fearful – because I didn't know what lay ahead.

Helpless – because I had lost control over my situation and couldn't see any way of regaining it.

Hopeless – because the future looked pretty bleak and I could not see any light on the horizon.

In a matter of a few weeks, my life took a turn I could never have predicted and was turned upside down.

To me routine was everything, I guess getting into a routine makes a busy life easier to juggle; you don't have to think about anything, you just work on auto-pilot. On the morning my life changed for ever, I did the same things I did every morning when I was going to work. I got up, made coffee, put the radio on in the bedroom and put my coffee by the side of the radio. I had turned around to start getting my clothes ready for the day when it happened.

The only way I can describe it is to say that an immense wave of fear swept through my body. The next thing I became conscious of was waking up on the floor: scared, alone, confused, wondering what had just occurred. I got myself back up on my feet and already my mind was working to find a logical reason for what had happened: perhaps I wasn't quite awake, turned too quickly?

I convinced myself that nothing was wrong and carried on with my day as normal. But as the day progressed the pain in my body, every muscle was hurting, became too much. Eventually I had to admit defeat and go home and crawl back into bed.

A few weeks passed and nothing else happened. I decided it must have been a one off event, so I brushed it under the carpet and carried on with life, safe in the belief it wouldn't happen again.

I work in a busy hospital as a registered health care professional and the shifts are often hectic. I had just finished a 12 hour shift and was going on-call. I thought I would just stop and have something to eat before retiring for the night. I remember going into the coffee room and putting my dinner into the microwave. There was another member of staff in the room. We had a brief chat but I had some work to do. I sat down on the chair and turned on the computer. The next thing I knew, I could hear people talking to me, trying to get me to sit back into the chair. I was completely confused and at a loss to understand what had happened. Perhaps, I thought, I had turned too quickly in the chair and, because I had not eaten for a while, I had fainted? From my perspective, that was the only reasonable explanation for finding myself on the floor with no awareness as to how I got there.

Staff were fussing around me, but I couldn't understand why. I had just fainted, that was all. I simply wanted them to leave me alone, there was nothing to worry about and all the fuss was embarrassing. Despite my insistence that I was okay, before I was properly aware of what was going on, I was on a trolley being taken to A&E.

Whilst in A&E some of the department staff where I work called in to see me. "Oh you look better now," they told me. I didn't reply. How could I? I had no idea what had just taken place.

When I saw the doctor he explained that I had experienced a seizure. I tried to explain that I hadn't – I had just fainted. The doctor looked at me and said, "You had a witnessed seizure. Has this happened before?" I explained what had occurred that morning a few weeks ago. The doctor advised me to go and see my GP, which I promised I would. Then I was allowed to go home. I left work feeling somewhat confused. I had suffered a seizure. But how? Why?

It wasn't long before I was sat in front of my GP, who advised me that, because I had now experienced two seizures, my condition was considered problematic and I was not to drive until I had seen the neurologist. He informed me that he would send an urgent request for me to be seen by one.

I went home, went to bed and hid under the duvet. I was scared and confused. I had so many questions; how could I have developed this, what was I going to do? I would lose my driving licence; what about my job? What would I do for a living? But, most importantly, how was I going to cope? There were so many questions running around my head. I don't know how long I cried for but I must have cried myself to sleep.

The next day I went to work and spoke to my boss. Together we decided to remove me off all out of hours work until I had seen the neurologist. I convinced myself this was the first step of losing my job. I had worked so hard to get to where I was today; I left school with no qualifications and joined the royal navy for a brief time. After working in different nursing homes I began working in a busy department. At the age of 29, I finally got a break and was accepted onto a training course. Two years and a lot of hard work later, I became a qualified practitioner. The hard work had continued and two months before the first seizure I had become a senior member of staff.

The job I do is one I had dreamt about for years but had never thought it would be possible. When I left school with nothing, I honestly thought that my working life would consist of menial jobs without any prospect of changing that. However, with hard work I had proved myself wrong and now I feared I was going to lose it all.

Before I had even begun to come to terms with things, I found myself sat in front of the neurologist. There is a lot of what he said to me that I don't remember. I do remember him explaining that it sounded like I was having tonic-clonic seizures. He wanted me to have tests before he started me on any medications, and I would have to surrender my driving licence to the DVLA. He could have said anything after that, but all I could focus on was that I wouldn't be able to drive any more.

I went home in shock. I had just been diagnosed with epilepsy without being given any information about what to expect or how to deal with it. For the first...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: John Hunt Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1782797467
• ISBN 13: 9781782797463
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 114
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Libri GmbH; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; Hessen; Deutschland