Double Double Fits and Seizures

It was a Wednesday morning, the weather; the kind that made you want to stay at home and sleep under the covers, my mood; as glum as the weather and it was with great reluctance that I dragged myself out of the teaching room to the ward for my clinical medicine appointment.

On entering the ward, I soon realized that the morning was not going to be as dull as the weather for one of the patient’s in the ward was having an epileptic seizure. I had never witnessed anyone having an epileptic seizure so the whole episode was novel for me.

Nurses were running everywhere trying to insert cannulae, to draw blood, to check the patient’s glucose level and to restrain the patient as he was getting aggressive. At that moment, part of me wished that I had around 10 pairs of eyes to take in all that was going on while another part of me wanted to just close my eyes till the whole episode was over.

10 minutes later, the patient had stopped fitting and the ward was returning back to normalcy, when the patient in the bed opposite the fitting patient started vomiting and the next moment he was standing on top of the bed and was having a fit. As a medical student I am ashamed to say I was terrified. My hand automatically found the hand of my friend who was standing next to me and next thing I know the both of us were hugging each other right there in the middle of the ward in front of all the patients, doctors, and nurses. My colleagues who I must say were much braver than me didn’t think twice before running towards the patient to prevent him from harming himself.

While the hospital staff was attending to patient number 2, patient number 1 started fitting again. By this time the whole situation had become overwhelming for me that instead of running towards the patient to help the nurses out I ran away from the patient. What can I say I guess I had reached my maximum dose of fits for the day?