The Bodies Priorities

As much as possible I try no to let being epileptic affect my life. Rather difficult with something so unpredictable that can be so serious you have to consider it continuously.

We have priorities and so does the body. My family are paramount in my life, which is why I take the medication for this disorder even though I hate the side effects. My training is second in my mind but unfortunately comes below work in reality because that is how I provide for my family.

There is the expression never question your spouse's judgement, look who they married, and my wife will point out where she was right and I wasn't, normally happily, but where epilepsy is concerned not so happily. She did state, and in fairness I agreed that having a seizure should be followed by a week of no training, or at least very light easy stuff.

Being me I forgot about this last week, genuinely, not conveniently. Seizure on Sunday night, squat session on Tuesday morning, no major deal session very light and didn't really notice much. Then I went for a run at lunch time, took it out of me a bit but didn't think much about it.

This is where the bodies priority list hit me hard. Epilepsy starts in the brain, the bodies number one priority, you may not think it to see some people but even if they don't prioritise their brain their body will be doing so. Following a seizure, most of the bodies resources will go into repairing the damage from this, a fact I know and knew before I even found out I had it.
I have recently injured myself, and minor as this may be recovering from it will still be relatively high on the bodies priority list.
So with all this going on in the background I gave the body something else to recover from, the net result was a run that I would have felt the effects of for a few hours was still affecting me a few days later, and I did end up taking a week off weights though not out of choice, purely because I didn't have it in me to train.

I hate being epileptic more than virtually anything else in the world and the daily reminder alarm to take my meds serves to remind me of this loathsome part of my life.
Unfortunately hating it and ignoring it will not make it go away and I have to accept that when seizures happen I have to accept it and allow my body to recover before pushing on. I am more fortunate than many, seizures that I notice the affect from are infrequent and most people can't imagine me having something like this, somehow being fit and capable stops others believing anything could possibly be wrong with me.

To those out there who have it or know people who do, it is worth remembering the effects of the build-up and recovery. I got snappy with my wife and son before and was less patient than I should have been after. It wasn't deliberate or intended to harm but it will have hurt their feelings when I did it. I apologised after and they accepted this with very good grace.
If you are the epileptic and are wondering why everyone is on your back after a seizure, it's because you'll have been on theirs for a while, be decent, apologise you couldn't help it but it was still you doing it. If you know someone who is and they are having a spate when they are unusually snappy, point it out to them, it's not nasty or picky, it could be good to bring to their attention in case it is a warning sign of impending seizure. If they are worth knowing they will thank you, though maybe after the event.