Epilepsy is a thief! It steals my daughter for minutes that seem like hours and renders me helpless. It brings fear! Fear of losing her, fear she’ll be bullied, fear of letting go, fear she’ll be treated as less, but…
epilepsy has taught me we are fighters, we are stronger than we thought and we will NEVER give up or lose hope! We are determined to keep educating and searching until a cure is found and epilepsy is locked away for good.
Epilepsy is heartbreak, but it is also happiness in the people we’ve met who we might never have known without it! Epilepsy is seizures, fears, tests, surgeries, medications, statistics, stigmas, tears, but it will not… it can not break me!
Purple Day started with a little girl named Megan Cassidy and her dream to spread awareness so that others with Epilepsy wouldn’t feel alone! Within a few short years and with the help of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc… her dream has become a global reality!
So what exactly is Purple Day?
It’s a day (March 26th) when people around the world wear purple or create purple projects within their community to support someone they love and/or talk about epilepsy! Last year my daughter’s cousins threw her a purple picnic with lots of purple treats!
This year we’re making purple cupcakes, having another Purple Day Picnic and talking about what to do if you ever come across someone having a seizure!
So… I thought today on the blog I would post a first aid guide to seizures!
So here goes…
What To Do In The Event Of A Seizure
1. First check to make sure the person you believe to be having a seizure isn’t choking.
2. If the person having a seizure has fallen and you can see they are visibly hurt call 911.
3. Try to remain calm, even though they can be scary to witness, most seizures only last a few minutes. Time the seizure, if it happens to last longer than 5 minutes or the person has multiple seizures call 911.
4. Do not hold the person having a seizure down, even if they are thrashing about, and DO NOT PUT ANYTHING IN THEIR MOUTH – they will not swallow their tongue!
5. Try to make the area around them safe by placing something under their head and removing any objects that could hurt them.
6. If you can try to turn them on their side as this will help keep their airway clear of saliva or incase they get sick during the seizure.
7. Try to pay attention to what they are doing! Are they swallowing repetitively? What body parts are moving? Are their eyes moving in a certain direction? If it’s a persons first seizure all this information can help an Epileptologist!
8. Check for a Med Alert bracelet/necklace! Sometimes these items will display allergies or give information about who to contact!
9. Often times a person coming out of a seizure is still in a confused state, they may not realize what happened, be a little out of it, embarrassed or scared. It’s important to talk to them calmly and let them know they are safe.
10. Make sure the person is fully alert before you give them food, drink or leave them.
Knowing this information is important as there are over 3 million people in the US who live with epilepsy, 50 million people around the world and 200,000 new cases every year!
There are also 50,000 epilepsy related deaths per year!
So what can you do on March 26th to support Purple Day?
Here’s a list:
Get seizure smart and know what to do in the event someone has a seizure
Wear Purple
Tweet a fact about epilepsy and add the hash tags #PurpleWave2012 #PurpleDay
Talk About It
Blog About It
Have a purple picnic
Attend a Walk or 5k in support of epilepsy
Do a penny drive with your school to raise funds
See if your school or work will have a ditch the duds and wear purple day
Most importantly treat a person with epilepsy no differently than you would treat a loved one or a friend!
First and foremost we’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who participated in Purple Day!
We truly were touched by all our friends, family and the readers here at Gone Bananas who pledged to wear purple on March 26th to help spread Epilepsy Awareness!
Meg took lots of time going over all the fabulous entries we received until she finally picked a winner.
So without further adieu here’s a video, directed and starred in by our very own Meg, revealing our winner and what they’ll receive!
We’d like to give a special shout out to Cassidy and her peeps at Purpleday.org for creating Purple Day and everything they do to promote epilepsy awareness.
As well as a big thank you to my sister-in-law Denise over at RunDMT for hosting a fabulous Purple Picnic for Meg and all the promoting she did to try and get people talking about it!
Oh yeah and the folks at Purpleday.org have said they will send a little shout out to our winner on twitter!
Coffee, Chocolate & Xanax 