Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
6 Sept 2012

[Health/Personal] My personal recount: What is SEIZURE?

I've never thought that seizure or epileptic fit, such seemingly scary and distant symptom, would ever occur to me. In fact, I used to pity people who suffer such involuntary and uncontrollable conditions. Ever since it happened to me, my viewpoint about it changed. For good.

I used to experience black-outs once a year when I was younger in primary school. And there was once I fell forward on an escalator at a MRT station as i was running late for work and the sharp edge of the escalator step pierced hard into my shin, and the pain caused me to black out on the train. Besides, there were a couple of times I just blacked out at home in the kitchen and in the toilet for no apparent reason. The pre-blackout symptoms were exactly the same all these years. I would see colourful stars and dark spots and eventually break out into cold sweat. Thereafter, energy would drain out of my body, so much that I had to lie down. So, the only possible explanations for such symptoms I can infer from all my experiences would be sudden downward blood flow from my brain (from standing up too abruptly) or blood loss due to injury or injury pain or over-excitement. My blood flow abit sord one. The symptoms and the likely causes don't really make sense to me.

Recently, i realised another cause for black-outs to happen to me and due to the same event, I discovered a new fear (or phobia now) that I have, albeit very unpleasantly. It was my honour to be invited to an event to witness the very amazing effects of what fillers and Botox could do to beautify women. Of course, I knew what are fillers and that they involve injections. Injections have always sounded frightening to me, but I don't remember being very afraid of needles when I was in Primary 6 even though I cried upon seeing my fellow primary school classmates cry. Haha. And i remember it wasn't even really painful afterall.

Ok, back to the story. So, I noticed that I was pretty uncomfortable about having such a clear front-row view of the needles poking into the volunteer's face. It was a little surprising to me then, because I was never aware of such physiological reflex that my body had at the sight of needles. As it was an invite-only event, I got hold of myself to snap some photos of the entire filler-injection procedure on one cheek. See, I how responsible despite all the uneasiness!

But within seconds after that injection, I started seeing the familiar stars and black spots. I was still confident of (and overestimated) myself in managing the discomfort and thought that closing my eyes and taking a rest from the heart-throbbing injections would chase those stars and spots away. I shut my eyes... It was definitely out of my calculations that I would even black-out.

The very next moment when I opened my eyes, the ENTIRE nurse crew PLUS the doctor who carried out the filler injection earlier on were surrounding me, all looking dead-worried. I noticed that the doc was holding my head up straight and preventing it from falling backwards again. It was then that I realised that my attempt to keep myself calm and rid my mind of the stars and spots was futile.

My bestie, Lianne, who was also my date for the event AND happens to be a lit major, vividly described the entire process of my seizure during the black-out. Apparently, I only blacked out for 1-2 minutes with all the following happening out of my awareness:

My body involuntarily moved right and "rested" on Lianne's shoulder, then it jerked left and rammed into Peishi, another blogger sitting on my left. Lianne got hold of my arm to stop the jerky movements, but she couldn't stop me from making weird gurgling sound and murmurs, with my entire body shaking and trembling slightly. Thank god that it was only within a minute or two that she realised something was wrong with all my symptoms and got help from the medical staff. And, I'm also thankful that it was only the pre-faint symptoms, not the full-out faint, so i regained consciousness within minutes.

So, I wiki'ed what epileptic seizure is and hope the below info could help you identify if you might have such a condition. Don't worry, I'm ok now!!! I'll just avoid needles next time! ^^ Don't worry. :)

An epileptic seizure, occasionally referred to as a fit, is defined as a transient symptom of "abnormal excessive or synchronous neuronal activity in the brain". The outward effect can be as dramatic as a wild thrashing movement (tonic-clonic seizure) or as mild as a brief loss of awareness (absence seizure). It can manifest as an alteration in mental state, tonicor clonic movements, convulsions, and various other psychic symptoms  
About 4% of people will have an unprovoked seizure by the age of 80 and the chance of experiencing a second seizure is between 30% and 50%. 
Seizures are often associated with a sudden and involuntary contraction of a group of muscles and loss of consciousness. However, a seizure can also be as subtle as a fleeting numbness of a part of the body, a brief or long term loss of memory, visual changes, sensing/discharging of an unpleasant odor, a strange epigastric sensation, or a sensation of fear and total state of confusion. A seizure can last from a few seconds to status epilepticus, a continuous group of seizures that is often life-threatening without immediate intervention. 
Some patients are able to tell when a seizure is about to happen. Some symptoms experienced by the person before a seizure may include dizziness, lightheadedness, tightening of the chest, and some experience things in slow-motion just prior to the seizure. 
Some possible causes of provoked seizure are dehydration, sleep deprivation, head injury, intoxication with drugs, fever, metabolic disturbances, withdrawal from drugs and stroke.
I apologize that I can't provide you with more professional information. But, please take care of your health and see a doctor if you see that you experienced the above symptoms often.

There is a flu bug attacking many of my friends recently. Please drink lots of water or herbal tea and eat pi pa gao or flu medicine for quick recovery before you spread the symptoms to your loved ones k. It's week 4 of school already! Hwaiting~

Ok, I'm gonna end here abruptly as I've got an assignment due soon!

x,
Ziwei :)
5 Jan 2012

The BEST of 2011

Late entry on some reflection of 2011.

B4 i get started on 2012, shall do abit of some recap on my 2011 new year resolution. Click here for the original entry.  :)

Was looking through at my old blog, and it's so gay. Omg. :/

Yup anyway, in short, for my 2011 new year resolutions, i focused on mainly 5 areas, namely: Studies Family Financial Love & Personal. I realised something is missing. Where did the Friends category go to? I realised i didn't even put in effort to be there for friends or even go for or organize outings when i know i have that capacity to do planning and arranging for outings. I did turn up for some outings in 2011 but would always prioritize dates with Leo over rare friends' gatherings. What kinda weird logic is that? Hmmm. Time for some reflection.
Firstly, for my studies, I'm glad that the boyfriend entered the same faculty and course as me, and I'm really thankful that he accompanied me throughout my 1st semester of AY2011/2012. Even though we were studying different modules, except for Nation Building (Singapore studies module) and Social Work (my last exposure module) , his lasting presence in almost all my mugging sessions served as a motivating support which kept me going for the 4 months of intensive mugging last semester.

I'm also immensely grateful for my Psychology mates, especially Meijun and Qianhua. We had been constantly reminding one another for professors' announcements and IVLE forum updates, as well as making phone and whatsapp discussions and meet-up group study sessions. It's with all these for my studies that I managed to pull up my CAP by 0.4 comparatively to the previous semesters where my CAP stayed put throughout my first 2 years of uni semesters. Unfortunately, it's now too late for me to pull up to an honours CAP.

I wanted to post some photos of these pretty Psych girlfriends and some studying pic of the boyfriend and I. Just remembered I was dressed too cui to want to take photos in school. Lol. Next year! Promise guys reading this that I'll post more pics of my chio friends for your eyegasm. Heehee.

Besides, I've decided to extend one more semester for the sake of Emerge and my CAP. Thanks to K's advice, I hope that this decision would allow me more time to focus on the more important modules. Hence, I'm only taking 4 modules next semester, of which are 3 psych mods (Socio-cog of emotions, Trauma psych and Cognitive psych) and an S/U-able module (Animal behavior). Do comment if you're taking any of these! :D
On the other hand, I can safely say that I've consciously put in a relatively substantial amount of effort to spend more time with my family, be it giving my family members random treats to MacDonald's breakfast, specially freeing myself on special festive occasions or putting aside extra time to tutor Jun. It feels very satisfactory, meaningful and fulfilling actually. :D So i believe in 2012, i'll continue to work harder to be a better sister, daughter and grand-daughter. :)

Financial wise. Some of my friends probably don't know that my family background is rather humble, of which the "great depression" was attributable to the 4 medical psychological cases in my direct family. I guess no more elaboration is required on the reason for my major in FASS. Hence, I do not take any allowance from my parents at all, which means that I pay for my daily meals, transportation and monthly bills by my own means of income from being a part-time tutor.

In 2011, I had been struggling financially due to the delay in bursary disbursement from the school. I survived nonetheless. This only teaches me a lesson to not be tempted by my girlfriends and bros to go overseas with them when I'm almost penniless. A monthly income of $700+ is just nice for me to settle my basic expenditure only. Recently, I've opened a savings account under OCBC and constantly depositing my tuition salary in. Hopefully, this habit doesn't die off ever. :)
My love life this year had been quite rocky after the 3rd anniversary together. Shall self-censor the content, so ask me personally if you're interested to find out. (Will only be open to people I'm close to, duh)

It's evident from the previous post, that we are back to the honeymoon times as we just celebrated our 44th at Sentosa. We realised that it's just impossible to live without each other anymore. There probably is an element of habit. It feels immensely uncomfortable to not call each other every night. Yet, it's definitely not only the habit that has glued us so tightly tgt. How would you explain the blessed feeling of falling in love again and again with the same guy every now and then? Rather than spending money extravagantly on dates and dinners, we have adopted the back-to-basics way of loving. It's effectively by far. Who says it's easy to maintain a relationship that has lasted for many years alrd?  Wait till you experienced it. Vague here because you can always refer to my old blog for mushy posts. Lol. :D
I hardly achieved any personal new year resolutions.

I hardly blogged due to the intensive mugging sessions. And yup i had put in exponential times the amount of time and effort (comparative to year 2010) for my family and friends. :D I gave up on swimming cos of the lousy bod now. :( Didn't contribute to my savings much too. Generally, i took better care of my health from exercising and watching my diet throughout the year and even managed to lose up to 5kg once in 1month....until last semester's final year revision. Gained back every kilo of fats from the daily starbucks dosage/addiction and high-carbo meals + complete lack of exercise. #22 and #23 is entirely impossible. LOL.

Refer to my new tab "2012" for my new year resolutions or click here. ;)

Hearts.
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