When I was 12 I woke up on the floor of my textiles classroom with my teacher, the school nurse and secretary crowded around, asking if I was OK. Then the pain hit. I had the worst headache ever, every noise was magnified 10 times. Saying that just sounds like every person you walk past during your day who is moaning that they have the worst headache ever. Trust me. They're lying.
This headache is so bad that, whatever direction the noise is coming from, a knife is stuck through your skull and into your brain and then, out of the blade of that, 100 miniature knives appear and start rotating. Then you try to straighten out your vision and focus your eyes and it starts to feel like your eyes are detached from you and a cat has found them fun to play with. After all that, there's always the excitement of playing the game Find the Injuries.
The last thing I remember before that first fit was having a conversation about what sort of boys I liked, then, boom, everybody's looking at me like I'm about to drop dead. I stumble to my feet and various people help me to walk down to the office. As I get out of the classroom, all my friends are crying. I'm really scared at this point. I don't know what's happening to me or my friends. We get to the office and Charlotte and Danielle come in with my stuff.
They looked really nervous and told me how I fell off my chair and started making funny noises, and they burst out laughing - then, when they saw the blood coming from my ear and my mouth, they stopped and starting panicking and called the teacher.
The first time I knew that people suspected I had epilepsy was when I heard the school nurse on the telephone speaking to my mum, saying: "I think your daughter has had an epileptic fit."
The hospital wasn't much fun either. All I wanted to do was sleep, which I now know I always need to do after a fit. But the doctors had to run their tests, so I had a tap put up my arm, I peed in a pot, then I thought, "Great, now I can go home," but no, they needed more blood, more everything.
After about five hours they said: "Thank you, Katy, we have absolutely no idea why you had this fit. It might be because you have started your period and you've started developing."
"But hang on a second, I started my period a year ago and developing breasts a bit before," I said. "Why didn't the fits start then?"
And their answer was: "We don't know. Come back later."
Everybody says you shouldn't be embarrassed about having epilepsy. I can't speak for anyone else with the condition, but I am. Not really of having epilepsy, although people do treat you differently once they find out, however much they try not to, but they have to, for your safety and theirs. It's what I do during a fit. I always have to do it in the worst places, say the school cafeteria or maybe, say, when I'm standing flirting with some guy I've fancied for six months. Then I drop and my skirt's over my head and I'm making stupid noises and there's blood dripping from my chewed tongue. However the guy feels about it or whatever he says, I will always be embarrassed about it.
Just like I've never stepped foot in our school cafeteria since I had a fit in it a year and a half ago, because the memory of all the embarrassment of waking up and knowing that half the school had seen me with my skirt over my head and making funny noises and faces. Just like I hate going to the butcher's or the hardware shop near my house because I've had fits there too.
It sounds like nothing, but for someone else to know what just happened to me, when I don't, trust me, it hurts. I would love for somebody to videotape me having a fit, just so I could fill in the gap. I know what to tell people to do when I have a fit. I know pretty well all the medicines that the NHS gives out, having been treated in three London hospital, and some of the alternative medicines that you can find in other places, but I've never seen a fit, not even someone else have one. It might sound strange to anyone reading this, but I would love to find out what the heck it looks like and what people's reactions are. People may say one thing to you and react in a completely different way when it actually happens. People find it so strange that I can't tell them what to expect during a fit.
Treatment wise, I tried the traditional epilepsy medicines and all they did for me was to make me have minor fits every day, but did not change the number of major ones, which were occurring every couple of weeks. When I said this to the doctors, all they said was: "Oh. It will take time to find the right combination and that may take two or three years - if you're lucky, less." And there was me needing to be able to walk out of the house without my mummy, like a little baby, and not be utterly petrified of having a fit.
So we started looking at homeopaths and things like that for about six months, and then my mum heard of someone whose diet had caused her to have fits. So we went to see a nutritionist and after about a month my fits reduced and he put me on a very strict diet, plus a whole load of vitamins and oils. Now I'm taking vitamins in the morning and at night and three tablespoons of an oil thing and not eating any wheat, dairy and not too much sugar and taking a digestive aid when I eat. That means no pizza, no pasta and no bread and definitely no ice cream. Pretty well everything a 15 year old eats.
I have been turned into a freak by the epilepsy, but my fits have reduced incredibly. The small ones have almost gone and the major ones are less often.
