Your child has seizures, what is it like for the parents?

ANY parent can understand the concern of David and Victoria Beckham last week when their three-year-old son, Romeo, was again rushed to hospital after suffering a series of seizures.
A combination of worry and helplessness affects even the most confident couples in a situation like this.

While it would be wrong for me to comment further about Romeo Beckham, because I do not know all the facts, seizures in young children with high temperatures are very common.

Such children do not usually need long-term medication and only a small number of such children go on to develop the condition we call epilepsy.

The brain is a complicated organ made up of millions of nerve cells. If something happens to interfere with its proper working, even for a brief moment, a seizure may occur.

Seizures may show themselves by causing anything from a brief loss of attention to what is going on in the outside world through disturbances of taste and smell to twitching of the limbs and total loss of consciousness. In a so-called generalised seizure, the person may bite their tongue and lose bladder control. Anyone can suffer a seizure if circumstances are right.

A very high temperature in children under the age of six is a common cause, because young brains are especially sensitive to heat. However, seizures can be triggered in adults also, such as after a blow to the head. It is reported that the Beckhams asked photographers not to use flash when taking pictures of the family but, fortunately, only a small proportion of seizures are triggered by flashing lights.

The chance of having a seizure is partly governed by your genes. Parents who experience seizures are more likely to have children with the same sensitivity.

Epilepsy is only diagnosed after a person has had more than one seizure. Blood tests, a variety of scans and an electro-encephalogram to read the electrical charges passing through the brain can all help in the diagnosis.

When epilepsy has been diagnosed, a decision is often made to treat it with drugs. Some do not respond so well and a tiny proportion may benefit from brain surgery. The average person with epilepsy can get on with normal life though there may initially be restrictions on things such as driving a car or using dangerous machinery.

What should you do if someone near you has a seizure? The most important thing is to prevent them from harming themselves, by keeping them away from open fires, for example. Usually, they soon get over the seizure without further help although medical assistance may be necessary if one persists for any length of time. A seizure lasting longer than 30 minutes is a medical emergency and needs urgent specialist treatment. If in any doubt telephone for advice.

Epilepsy is very common, it affects about 45,000 people in Scotland alone, so you are highly likely to know someone with this condition, even if not in your family. A most important thing to remember is that the vast majority of folk with epilepsy are normal in every other way. They are just as likely to be as intelligent or more intelligent as yourself. They are certainly just as likely to feel the pain of being socially excluded or treated as an object of fear or fun.

Ignorance of the condition amongst the general public can not only cause a great deal of unnecessary unhappiness, it can deny to the rest of us the full use of the talents that those with epilepsy can otherwise offer.