This Is Me — The Untold Side of Epilepsy
Sometimes I have to slow down when I am laughing
I love laughing. I still want to laugh, have fun and enjoy myself like anybody else. But I have learned something unusual about my own seizures: if I laugh too much or for too long, it can end with me having a seizure.
Sometimes Dave will tell me to calm down or slow down a little when I really get going. To somebody who does not know us, that could sound as though he is trying to control me. He isn’t.
He knows my seizures. He has seen what can happen when my laughter goes too far, so he is trying to help me settle before I reach that point. He is not telling me not to laugh. He is watching out for me.
That is one of the strange things about my epilepsy. Stress and being very upset can affect me, but so can something completely opposite: laughing and enjoying myself too much.
I still laugh. I still have fun. I have simply learned that sometimes I need to slow myself down, and sometimes the person beside me notices that before I do.
Why I am sharing this
Seizure triggers are very individual. This is not me saying that laughter triggers seizures for everyone with epilepsy. It is something I have noticed repeatedly in my own life.
This is my epilepsy. Yours may look completely different.