It's later than you think (2019)

My son has epilepsy. He had his first seizure in 2016, when he was five years old. It was almost bedtime and he was pretending to be a frog when he suddenly collapsed to the floor and started convulsing. My wife and I have no history of epilepsy and neither of us had seen a tonic-clonic seizure before. I thought he was dying, his life pouring out of him with each convulsion. My wife called 911. His face was blank. I grabbed him and ran down the stairs to the street in my underwear, howling for someone to please help us. Some people stared and some came running to help, one of them a nurse, who helped me put him down on the grass in a recovery position. I never got her name. My son started coming to as the ambulance arrived.

That was the worst moment of our lives. A month later he would be hit by a series of seizures in rapid succession and we would find ourselves in an intensive care room in BC Children's, where I sat on the floor and watched a team of doctors and nurses struggle to stabilize him. That was also the worst moment of our lives.

I want you to know that about 1 in 10 will experience a seizure in their lifetime. And I want you to know what to do if it happens to someone who is with you. You should keep calm, ease the person to the floor, and turn them gently to the side. Put something soft under the person's head and clear the environment around the person of any hard or sharp objects. If the person has never had a seizure before or if the seizure lasts more than five minutes, call an ambulance.