Seizure

I witnessed someone having a seizure yesterday. It was probably the scariest thing I have ever seen in person. A bunch of us were in a meeting, when suddenly the guy next to me started spasming and making all these weird noises. Face turning blue, then white, then red, white again, mouth foaming and everything.

Not knowing what the freak was happening or what to do about it, all we could do was try to steady him in his chair as he was violently shaking. Then after the spasms stopped, he started moving around like a zombie as we tried to keep him in the room until the paramedics arrived. When we stopped him from moving around too far, he started fighting us and shouting. At first it was incoherent, then he was shouting stuff like "LET ME GO" or "STOP HOLDING ME", which continued even after the paramedics got there and were trying to strap him to a stretcher.

Like I said, it was one of the scariest things I have ever experienced firsthand. At one point I was holding him when his eyes rolled backwards, his mouth all foamy, and his body went limp. I really thought he was going to die right there in my arms.

For the rest of the day I felt a little lightheaded and weak, as that scene kept replaying in my head. He was literally in the middle of a sentence when all of this started happening, and within seconds, complete chaos. Always knew him as a normal, somewhat quiet guy, nice person and good sense of humor, maybe only a year or two older than me. I think they said he was on medication for something, but other than that, he seemed healthy enough.

I don't know how many of you out there have witnessed anything like that, but I haven't ever seen anything remotely close to this in my life and it scared the crap out of me. And I don't think of myself as a person who scares easily in general. Didn't know if it was a heart attack, panic attack, epilepsy, or even demon possession at the time. Afterwards, one of the medics explained that he would probably be okay, that it looked a lot worse than it was, and it was common for the person to be combative in their disoriented state, which he definitely was. And thankfully, the news today is that he was released from the hospital and is doing fine, so I guess the medic was right.

Still, I really hope I (or anyone) would ever have to witness, or worse yet, have a seizure like that. If any of you are ever in that situation, though, one thing I heard is that you should put something soft in the person's mouth so they don't bite their tongue off. Other than that, just hope the paramedics get there fast and let them handle it.

Thus ends my horror story of the day. Sorry if it was disturbing.