7 Things A Seizure Nurse Wishes Everyone With Epilepsy Knew Before The Holidays
Epilepsy monitoring unit nurse, 23 years
Louisville, Kentucky
Every Thursday at 2 PM, I ask a family the same question.
"If he has a seizure in front of you tonight, what do you do?"
I work in an epilepsy monitoring unit. It's the hospital floor where people with epilepsy stay for days, wired to brain-wave monitors and watched on camera around the clock, so the doctors can catch their seizures on tape.
I've watched more seizures from start to finish than I could ever count. Live on a screen, then again on replay, frame by frame.
And before anybody goes home, I sit their family down at a round table and teach them what to do.
I keep a plastic spoon in my bag for that class. I hold it up and ask who's ever been told to put one of these in somebody's mouth during a seizure. Most of the hands go up.
On a Thursday in September, a woman who has been married to her husband for 44 years answered my question proudly: "Put a spoon in his mouth."
Most of the answers I hear on Thursdays are wrong. And these are the people who love him. The ones who drove him here and slept in the chair next to his bed.
Now think about who's actually standing next to you when it happens. The cashier. The man in the next pew. Your son-in-law's family. A bus full of strangers.
The person who's with you when it happens probably won't be one of the people I taught.
Nobody sits you down and explains what changes for the people around you. So I will. Seven things. Read them before the holidays. And if you only read one, read #2.
#1: The person who finds you probably won't know you.
Seizures don't wait for a good place. They happen in the checkout line, on the bus, at church, at a party, in a stranger's living room.
The people there want to help. They really do. They've just never been taught how. So they do what they saw on TV, or what somebody's grandmother told them fifty years ago.
They hold you down. They shove something in your mouth. They start CPR. They shout your name, pour water on you, and film it.
Carla is 52. She's been my patient for years. At a church fish fry on a Friday in Lent last year, she had a seizure at the long table by the coffee urn.
A kind man she'd never met knelt down, grabbed a metal spoon off the table and forced it between her teeth, "so she wouldn't swallow her tongue."
She came to with a chipped front tooth and a room full of people telling her he'd saved her life.
You cannot swallow your tongue. In 23 years of watching seizures, I have never once seen it happen.
The CDC's own first-aid page is blunt about it:
- Don't hold the person down or stop their movements. This could injure you or them.
- Don't put anything in their mouth. This can hurt their teeth or jaw.
- Don't give mouth-to-mouth breaths during the seizure. People usually start breathing again on their own after a seizure.
- Don't offer water or food until they are fully alert. This is not necessary and could cause them to choke.
That man was trying to save her. Nobody had ever told him. And the next stranger won't have been told either, unless something on you tells them.
→ See the one word I want strangers to readI don't want to have to explain my epilepsy to everyone I meet. Having this on my wrist gives me a little extra confidence when I'm out.
#2: The CDC tells that stranger to look at your wrist.
This is the one I need you to read.
When a scared stranger wants to know what to do for someone having a seizure, the U.S. government has already written it down for them. It's the CDC's page called "First Aid for Seizures." Here are its steps, word for word:
- Keep yourself and others calm.
- Stay with the person.
- Remove anything near them that can cause an injury.
- Check to see if they are wearing a medical bracelet for information about any medical conditions, medicines, and emergency contacts.
- If the person is lying down, turn them gently on their side, with their mouth pointing to the ground. This will keep their airway clear.
- Time the seizure to track if it lasts more than 5 minutes. If it does, seek immediate medical attention or call 911.
- When the seizure is over, help them sit in a safe place to recover.
- Once they are alert, comfort them and explain what happened.
- Offer to call a friend or loved one to help them get home safely.
Read the fourth one again.
I've handed that page to families for years. Almost none of them had noticed that line until I put my finger on it.
The Epilepsy Foundation teaches it too. Their first aid comes down to three words: Stay. Safe. Side. And right there under "Stay," they tell people to check for a medical ID.
Your wrist is literally in the instructions. Anybody who has ever looked up what to do was told to look there.
So the question isn't whether somebody will look.
The question is what they'll find when they do.
A bare wrist tells them nothing. A watch tells them the time.
→ See what I want them to find on yours#3: A seizure doesn't always look like a seizure.
When most people picture a seizure, they picture someone on the floor, shaking.
That's one kind. I watch the other kinds every day on my monitors.
A stare. Lips smacking. Hands fumbling with a zipper or a purse strap. Walking off like you're late for something. Not answering when someone says your name.
And afterward, people can be confused, slow, sleepy, upset, or pull away hard when a stranger grabs their arm.
Now picture that from the outside. To a stranger, it can look drunk. High. Rude. Like shoplifting. Epilepsy groups have been warning about exactly this for years.
Mrs. P is 71. She was standing in her pharmacy line when she stopped answering the clerk. She fumbled with her purse strap until the purse hit the floor. Then she walked straight through the little swinging door and behind the counter.
The clerk called security.
Nobody in that store thought "seizure." Why would they? There was nothing on her to tell them.
→ See the bracelet that tells them what they're looking at#4: You won't be able to tell them. And the people who could won't be there.
During a seizure, you can't talk. And for a while after, you may not know your own name, where you live, or what you take.
I know this from the monitor. I also know it from my own family.
My big brother Danny is 61. He's had epilepsy since a car crash the summer he was 19. That was 1984. I was 16, and watching him that year is a big part of why I became a nurse.
Danny is a piano tuner. He doesn't drive, so he hauls his tools in a rolling case and gets rides or takes the bus. He lives alone in Bowling Green. He spends his workdays alone in strangers' living rooms.
On Tuesday, March 10th of this year, he had a seizure in a customer's living room in Glasgow, Kentucky. The homeowner was 80. She'd met him that morning. She did the right thing: she called 911 and stood in her kitchen doorway, scared to death.
When the EMT got there, Danny was coming out of it, foggy and slow, the way people are after a seizure. The EMT asked him his name.
He had a card in his wallet. The wallet was in his jacket. The jacket was hanging on a hook by her front door.
His phone was in his tool case.
And the one person who could have told them everything was 90 miles away, in a monitoring room, watching somebody else's seizure on a screen. Me.
The ER nurse found my number on the card in his wallet about three hours later.
Danny had a plan. Everybody I teach has a plan. Here's where those plans usually are when it happens:
Every one of those works on paper. None of them is on you.
→ See the one thing that's always on youMy daughter lives alone and I've always worried about what would happen if she had a seizure outside. Got her this and she wears it every day.
#5: If they don't know it's epilepsy, they have to treat it like your first seizure. That's why my brother wears this.
This is the part families never think about.
The CDC gives bystanders a list of when to call 911. Here it is:
- The seizure lasts longer than 5 minutes.
- They have another seizure soon after the first one.
- They have trouble breathing or waking up after the seizure.
- They are injured during the seizure.
- The seizure happens in water.
- Has never had a seizure before.
- Has diabetes and loses consciousness.
- Is pregnant.
Look at the second part. "Has never had a seizure before."
A stranger has no way of knowing that isn't you. So they have to assume it is. They call. The ambulance comes. And the ER works you up like it's your very first one.
Mr. H is 66, a retired mail carrier. He had a seizure at his son-in-law's family's Thanksgiving table on Thursday, November 28th, 2024. Nobody at that table knew he had epilepsy. He'd never told them.
They did what anyone would do. They called 911. He spent Thanksgiving night in an ER hallway being worked up for a "first seizure" he'd had many times before.
It's what happened to Danny in Glasgow, too. Nobody there knew, so they treated it like his first. The ambulance. The ER. A long afternoon of tests for something he's lived with since 1984.
Let me be clear: this doesn't mean nobody calls 911. Sometimes you need them, and the list above says when.
It means whoever's with you knows what they're looking at. They time it. They keep you safe. They roll you on your side. And when the crew arrives, they say "epilepsy" instead of "I don't know."
After Glasgow, I went looking for something Danny would actually wear. Not a hospital tag. Nothing to charge, unlock or pay for every month. Danny won't wear anything that looks medical, and he is not a jewelry man.
What I found is the Onuva Epilepsy Bracelet.
(red medical charm)
(black medical charm)
(Danny's)
(all black)
One word, engraved into the steel: EPILEPSY. A slim bar on a chain, with a little medical charm hanging beside it. Red on the Silver, black on the Gold. Or the same word on a steel plate, on a black silicone sport band, with the medical symbol right beside it in red or black.
Danny wears the black band with the red symbol. He turned it over in his fingers for a long time, then said it looks like the strap on Dad's old work watch. From Danny, that's a yes. It goes into every stranger's living room with him now.
What I look for as a seizure nurse, and why this one passes:
- On the wrist, where the CDC tells bystanders to look
- Says EPILEPSY in plain letters a scared stranger can read
- Looks like jewelry or a plain sport band, so you'll actually wear it, and nobody who doesn't need to know will know
- No battery, no app, no monthly fee
I'll be honest with you, because I'm honest with my families. It won't stop a seizure. Nothing you wear stops a seizure. What it does is make sure the people around you know what they're looking at.
And Onuva backs it: lose it or break it in the first year, they replace it free. Don't love it, you've got 90 days to get your money back.
I was worried it would look like one of those hospital bracelets but it's actually really pretty. I wear it every day.
The Epilepsy Bracelet
- EPILEPSY on steel, readable at a glance
- A steel chain in silver or gold, or a black silicone band: looks like jewelry or a sport band, not a hospital tag
- Adjustable, made to wear every day
- No battery, no app, no monthly fee
1-Year Free
Replacement↩️
90-Day
Money Back🔋
No Battery
No App🔒
Secure
Checkout
#6: The holidays are made of your triggers.
Every family I teach hears this from me: protect the sleep, take the pills on time, go easy on the alcohol, keep the stress down.
The CDC says the same thing. Lost sleep, stress and alcohol are on its list of things people with epilepsy should avoid to help keep seizures under control.
Now look at December.
Late nights. Early flights and long drives. Pills taken late, or missed, because the whole schedule falls apart. Wine at every table. The noise. The stress. A strange bed in somebody else's house. And rooms full of people who have never seen a seizure.
It's like somebody built the holidays out of everything I tell my patients to avoid.
This Christmas, Danny's taking the Greyhound from Bowling Green to my house in Louisville. A bus full of strangers, the week everybody's tired and running late.
I used to lie awake over a ride like that. Now I know what's on his wrist.
So if you do one thing before you pack, put it on. Order early, so it's on your wrist before Thanksgiving, not wrapped under a tree.
Right now there's a holiday deal on: two for the price of one. One on your wrist, and one for someone else in your life who needs it.
→ Check today's holiday deal#7: Give your family 60 seconds before the turkey.
Here's the card I hand every family on Thursdays. It takes about a minute to read out loud.
- STAY with them. Time it from the start.
- Keep them SAFE: move the hard, sharp things away. Don't hold them down.
- Nothing in the mouth. Not a spoon, not a wallet, not your fingers.
- Turn them on their SIDE, mouth toward the floor.
- Look at the wrist.
- Call 911 if it goes past 5 minutes, another one follows, they're hurt, it happens in water, or they have trouble breathing or waking up.
Print it. Stick it on the fridge. And read it out loud at Thanksgiving, while everybody's in one room.
And while everybody's in that room, look at the wrists of the people you love. If someone at that table has epilepsy and there's nothing on that wrist, you know what to do.
You've got two choices
What Families Ask Me On Thursdays
What does it say?
One word, on steel: EPILEPSY. On the chain, a little medical charm hangs right beside it (red on the Silver, black on the Gold). On the band, the medical symbol sits on the steel plate right next to the word (red or black). Either way, a stranger knows it's a medical ID the second they see it.
Will it fit?
One size fits most wrists. The chain is adjustable, from about 6.3" to 8.3". The band buckles like a watch strap, so you set your own fit.
Silver, Gold or the band?
The Silver and the Gold are stainless steel chains. The Gold is gold-plated, so keep perfume and lotion off it. The band is black silicone with a stainless steel plate. The men in these stories wear the band: up close it reads EPILEPSY, from across the room it looks like a sport watch strap.
Is there a men's version, or something sturdier?
Yes: the black silicone band. It's a sport-style band that buckles like a watch strap, with a steel plate that reads EPILEPSY and the medical symbol beside it, in red or all black. Same holiday deal, same 1-year free replacement, same 90 days to send it back.
Will everybody know my business?
No. From a few feet away it looks like jewelry. The only person who reads it is the one who needs to: whoever is next to you when it matters.
Can I wear it in the shower?
Everyday splashes are fine. Take it off for swimming, baths and long showers.
Does it call anyone or track me?
No. No GPS, no alerts, no battery, no subscription. Its one job is to tell whoever is with you what they're looking at.
Will it stop a seizure?
No. Nothing you wear stops a seizure. It tells whoever is with you what they're looking at.
How fast does it ship?
Orders ship within 1–3 business days and arrive in 5–8 business days, with tracking. Order early if you want it on before the holidays.
What if I lose it?
For a full year, replacement is free. No proof required, no return needed.
Can I send it back?
Yes. You have 90 days. If it isn't right, you get your money back.
- Check to see if they are wearing a medical bracelet for information about any medical conditions, medicines, and emergency contacts.
- Don't hold the person down or stop their movements. This could injure you or them.
- Don't put anything in their mouth. This can hurt their teeth or jaw.
- Time the seizure to track if it lasts more than 5 minutes. If it does, seek immediate medical attention or call 911.
What Wearers Say
The Epilepsy Bracelet
- EPILEPSY on steel, readable at a glance
- A steel chain in silver or gold, or a black silicone band: looks like jewelry or a sport band, not a hospital tag
- Adjustable, made to wear every day
- No battery, no app, no monthly fee
1-Year Free
Replacement↩️
90-Day
Money Back🔋
No Battery
No App🔒
Secure
Checkout
Get your sleep. Take your pills on time. Put it on before you pack.
P.S. Danny called last week to argue about who's bringing the pie. Before he hung up, I asked him the question I ask every family. "Is it on?" He said, "Since March, Mo." If someone you love has epilepsy, get theirs on before the holidays.