The last thing Trent Neil remembers before having his first seizure was a feeling like he couldn’t speak.
A healthy, 29-year-old father with a wife and two young daughters, Neil was experiencing something that impacts 3.4 million Americans every year.
While many might be aware of what a seizure is, not everyone is as knowledgeable and prepared on what to do in a situation when someone is having one.
With him at the time of his seizure was Neil’s 18-year-old co-worker, Rayden Holthaus, who later recalled watching a video years before about how to respond to a person having a seizure.
“Having someone else around when someone has a seizure could be the difference between life and death at times,” Buchanan County EMT Andrew King said.
Within seconds, Holthaus rushed over and rolled Neil’s body onto its side, making sure to keep his bobbing head from hitting any hard objects or surfaces.
King said Buchanan County EMS and first responders always are looking to educate people on how to respond to seizures the way Holthaus did.
“It is a scary thing to see your loved one fall, to see them turn pale, to know they’ve stopped breathing and see them twitch like that,” King said. “But seizures are not as scary as they seem to be on the outside. It’s really just kinda of your brain rebooting.”
With certain information on seizure first aid being dispelled through years of study and education, recording the length of the seizure is helpful information for first responders and physicians.
“We still have a lot of people trying to put things in somebody’s mouth while they’re having a seizure,” King said. “The human bite force is very strong. We would hate for them to bite through whatever is in their mouth and possibly bite through it and choke.”
Getting someone rolled off their back and on to one side will not only help with a person’s breathing, but decrease the chances of choking and inhaling something.
“The chance of somebody aspirating (inhaling) on throw-up or something like that is very high and it’s very dangerous,” King said. “They can get aspiration pneumonia, which can turn into a very bad infection of the lungs, which can be deadly.”
If a seizure lasts for more than five minutes, if someone is having a seizure for the first time or if a second seizure occurs, call 911 immediately.
But if someone is witnessing a seizure and isn’t confident about what to do, King says 911 dispatchers will help guide a person through the situation.
King said Buchanan County EMS typically transport about 25 people every year due to seizures, but first responders receive many additional seizure calls where people aren’t transported.
Considered the fourth most common neurological condition, according to the Center for Disease Control, the number of people living with epilepsy, a disorder that causes seizures, is greater than those with autism disorders, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy combined.
While seizures can occur without being diagnosed with epilepsy, epileptic and non-epileptic seizures can be caused by one of a variety of different conditions affecting the brain and range in severity.
Having a stroke, brain tumor or traumatic injury or illness can potentially cause one of the two major types of seizures: generalized and focal.
Generalized seizure sub-types like “grand mal” seizures are characterized by violent shaking and a complete loss of consciousness.
Focal seizures occur in one area of the brain. People having certain types of focal seizures may seem confused or look like they are staring at something that isn’t there, unable to answer questions or twitch.
In Neil’s case, MRI scans taken the next day determined the cause of his first seizure: a small non-cancerous mass on his left temporal lobe, one surgeons were able to successfully remove at the University of Kansas Medical Center.
Neil said he was in awe after learning what Rayden had been able to do to help him.
“I don’t know if he had training in it, but he was there, he was basically my first responder,” Neil said. “I wouldn’t have known what to do. It’s definitely something that everyone should know. I think it should be taught in your health class like CPR. It should be that common.”
