Catalog Forward by Steven C. Schacter, MD

"Again, the words of people as they express their auras(1)."

"Before the possibility of having a seizure I first feel a tightness inside my chest. As the tightness increases so do my emotions. For example, my love for my wife intensifies, gratefulness for having a job increases and general love for humanity becomes much stronger."

"A pleasant 'feeling' usually comes over me -- almost a feeling of joy -- perhaps of the magic fairy coming down to take me away. I know when this happens I will be having a seizure and I have enough time to let the person with me know -- usually I say 'I'm going out!'"

"The feeling I experience is a sound in my head. This sound combines a hush and a ring. The hush being the dominant sound. If you want to get an idea of what I hear, go into a quiet room and just listen. You won't hear anything except a hush and a ringing sound. The sound of silence. This sound increases in volume to the point where it fills my head. It doesn't hurt. It interferes with my ability to hear people who are speaking to me. I know they are talking but the words are distorted."

"Sounds and voices in my surrounding environment become distorted in a fashion very y similar to a record being played at a speed to slow for its design."

"I would then be seeing something...almost like a dream that would take place in my mind, while I was wide awake. I found I would not remember what it was that I would see during this time."

"When I first started to have problems that I questioned, they were just problems with dreams while I was I was wide awake. I would feel light-headed from them while they would occur."

"I started feeling panicky and scared. I started to feel as if I can't breathe."

"I began to feel 'it' coming on. It's a feeling of losing it, slipping. Surroundings become surreal, and there's a sense of panic. The anxiety, then fright, then panic build. It's very internal. I lose contact with reality, even though it's familiar and friendly, not threatening in any way."

"Seizures are characterized by blunting of stimuli, difficulty concentrating, visceral butterflies in stomach and an abject sense of impending doom--the latter something like King Lear -- doom spells lasting 1-3 minutes of horrific intensity. To paraphrase Mark Twain, they aren't as long as they seem."

"I experience a combination of deja vu with extreme fear. Nothing I do takes me out of deja vu -- that is, everything that happens becomes a part of it, and so the general feeling is of being in front of an oncoming train with no way of escape."

"I usually notice a feeling of being removed from my position; I can only describe it as feeling like I'm being sucked into a constantly narrowing tunnel. This feeling can be followed by what I can describe only as being a rising or surging sensation, similar to what one might experience when going rapidly downhill and then uphill on an amusement park ride."

"Sitting down to dinner on an August night, I stared at my plate of food as my depth perception distorted gradually. I saw the food quite closely while everything else seemed to have a different size and was clouded in weird haze then I remember nothing until it was over."

"One is a very sour spoiled taste like very spoiled milk. The taste is so bad that I try to spit it out or force myself to swallow. But the taste always seems to come back."

1. Schacter,S.C. Brainstorms: Epilepsy In Our Words. Raven Press, New York.

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