I had a tough year where my grandmother died and other things where going on in my professional life. I began to see that the epilepsy demands of sleeping 8 hours a night would cause me to change my dreams of being in film production, as well as dealing with many other changes in my life. After all the stress, one day I experienced a convulsive attack after meeting someone in an airport, this day changed everything for me. The fear of being alone whilst I had a seizure started creeping up on me. Even though I had this condition for years, I had never had any problems emotionally.

I began noticing that I would get a crippling feeling, nausea, spaciness (since TLM I realized this was de-personalization) and a fear that something terrible was about to occur to me (when I was in the airport alone. I would also get blurred vision and lightheadedness (de-realization), all these symptoms began getting worse. The amazing part of anxiety is that it mimics your worst fear health wise, for me this monster would mimic identically my symptoms before a seizure.

Slowly very slowly but surely, I realized that I was not having an epileptic aura that I was experiencing, but it was something called anxiety and panic attacks. The more I read about my symptoms, the more I was sure that this is what was happening to me, it seemed improbable because ‘I’m not crazy’.

I thought, “great…no problem… it’s all in my head…this is doable” (I wish). It began increasing every day to the point the epilepsy was not the problem in my life. I WAS AFRAID OF BEING AFRAID. Nothing was working and I didn’t understand why, I felt terrible.

When I had my first child and it got worse, I was afraid of having a panic attack alone with him and didn’t know what to do.

I had a nanny for my child, but she became MY nanny. I could not drive alone anymore and she would accompany me everywhere. Airports, any kind of traveling where I was alone were a thing of the past. No more adventures in my life because I had to go with someone and it was torture. The airplane was fine; it was the airport, when anyone asked me questions at the airport I would stop breathing and could not follow a train of thought and that would become overwhelming and paralyze me.

I remember one time when I was left alone with my son at home and I remember clearly seeing from my window the children’s slides, swings, and wanting to take him but feeling paralyzed. I had no life anymore.

I went to therapy for three years at least and it got a little better, but I still had safety net of being with someone at all times. The neurologist changed my medicine because I blacked out one day, thinking it was my epilepsy, he said this was a better medicine for me to be taking.

I know now that that particular black out was a panic attack since I had no other symptoms of seizure. The change in medicine was my private hell. My hands would shake and I had cold sweats, I read online that even though this was the best medicine, it caused anxiety. “WHAT?” That was it. I would have to take the famous anxiety drugs everyone was talking about and I had refused to accept.

I couldn’t live like this anymore. I made an appointment with a psychiatrist and, thankfully, she couldn’t fit me in until a month later. During that month, I felt defeated and humiliated. How could something in my head that I should be able to control paralyze me and ruin my life? Everyone around me looked at me like I was making a big issue about nothing and that I should just “calm down”. Why couldn’t I just calm down?