Humane Treatment

I have touched upon being treated in various ways while being treated for seizures. In my thirty year experience in the medical field I've met wonderful caring people who only want the best for the patient. I have met others too. We are human. We have egos and play politics too.

I highly recommend that if you have a seizure disorder that you not only have an advance directive in place, but an active advocate on your behalf when you are not able to speak for yourself.

Though my negative experiences with the healthcare field while as a patient are hopefull unique, I certainly want to help you avoid them.

In some emergency departments, hospitals, psychiatric facilities and so forth, seizures can be very poorly understood. Organic and nonorganic (meaning epilepsy and nonepileptic and/or psychogenic nonepileptic seizures).

If you are fortunate to land in a good epilepsy care facility (not all are created equal) you may have a chance at comprehensive diagnostic and compassionate care.

For some reason modern medicine in many areas have not caught up with the notion that there are many types of seizures (140 just in epilepsy) that are both epileptic and non epileptic. Emergency rooms are overrun with folks who are seeking narcotics, escapes from bad situations, etc.

They are not comprehensively equipped or trained in seizure diagnosis (need an epilepsy unit for that). I personally feel that since this is so, that the 'tricks' of the trade in deciding whether a seizure is 'real' or not, needs only to decide the amount of IV medicine that needs to be administered to save someone from status epilepticus.

All other judgements/attitudes can remain at home. Modern medicine does not have all the data in yet. I honestly feel the number of outright 'faked' seizures are very small, and that person is probably well known to the hospital.

I have a proposed emergency department treatment plan on my website. I hope it will be reviewed and implemented in part or whole so that seizure patients will begin to receive professional loving attitude of care they have a right to.

Please don't leave your patient in their urine as 'punishment'. Please don't pinch them harder and harder until they have black fingernails, sternum and bruises all over. Please don't rip out hair.

If you are really concerned about this phenomenom, read what's out there on Entrz PubMed. Look at my website. Look at what is working. Feel free to write to me. I've been on both sides of the bedrails. Thank you for listening.