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Back in 1975, a week after graduating from high school and with my entire life ahead of me, I had a nervous breakdown accompanied by a grand mal seizure and a total shut-down of my heart and lungs.

I had just started a vacation with the rest of my family (parents, brother, and three sisters) and we were driving to Corpus Christi to spend a couple weeks camping on the beach. It was a vacation I was really looking forward to and perhaps itself the trigger of the seizure and nervous breakdown.

For the last two years I was in high school, I participated in a program that allowed me to go to school for a half day and work for a half day. I worked as the manager of a service station in the heart of the San Antonio Medical Center Complex. Out of this service station, and in addition to the normal automotive services offered during that time period, we ran a truck, trailer and equipment rental company that included, front loaders, chain saws, building tools, lawn tools, etc., so I had the responsibility of more than your typical gas station. I am not complaining, I loved it, but I perhaps took on more responsibility than I was prepared to deal with on a stress management level.

Anyway, my typical day required opening up at 7:00 am and getting everything going smoothly by 8:30 am when I would head off to school. At 11:30 am I was finished at school for the day and was back at work by noon where I would work until closing at 9:00 pm. Weekends I almost always worked Saturday and Sunday from 7:00 am until 9:00 pm.

Now that I have established my schedule leading up to this particular vacation, I can get back to the event itself.

As we were traveling to Corpus, I was riding in the front passenger seat and my father was driving. It was typical for me to ride in front, I was 6′ 4″ tall and my mother almost always let me sit up there for the extra leg room. I do not remember anything out of the ordinary about this particular day leading up to my seizure. I do remember being happy about having the vacation and being finished with high school, and I was enjoying a book as we made our way to the beach.

Suddenly, and I vividly remember this, I lurched forward in the seat and felt a darkness come over me. I couldn’t breathe, and everything went completely black within two seconds. I knew I was going to hit my head on the dash, but I couldn’t stop the forward motion or raise my hands to stop. There was nothing frightening about this two seconds it was really quite surreal. As I lurched forward, I do remember trying to say that something was wrong, but while I had a conscious knowledge of what was happening, I had no ability to do anything of my own free will. I have often wondered if this two-second period of conscious helplessness is what someone experiencing a heart attack feels.

I don’t remember anything else very well for the next 30 minutes and I only have a vague recollection of those things that I can remember. Apparently, when I blacked out I very suddenly straightened out, broke the seat in our family station wagon (a substantial feat to accomplish in a new Oldsmobile) and broke the seatbelt. My father immediately pulled the car over to the side of the road and found that I had no heartbeat and was not breathing. He pulled me from the car and gave me CPR.

As soon as I showed signs of recovery, he focused his attention on flagging down other cars to get directions to the nearest hospital. I apparently got up and back into the car, but I don’t remember this at all. The next thing I do remember was waking up in front of a grocery store and seeing my father running in to get better directions. One of my sisters was crying very loud (this was not unusual for her) so I decided to go back to sleep. As I tried to fall asleep, my mother was asking me a million questions that I am told I answered, but I cannot remember being asked or answering.

About fifteen minutes later I awoke in a doctor’s examining room and was being questioned by the doctor. I understand I went in under my own power and apparently conscious, but I don’t remember going in or any of the exam. I do remember being asked to have a seat in a wheelchair to be taken back to our family car when the exam was over.

My first real memory of anything was of things that happened two days later. I remember nothing of the trip home or the next day visiting several doctors. I was not under the influence of any drugs that would have inhibited my memory or kept me unconscious, but I have no memory of those two days. The memories I described immediately following the seizure are things that started to come back to me two days after I had it and while they are my memories and not reconstructed from what others told me, they nonetheless seem more like dreams than anything that really happened to me.

For the next three years I took Phenobarbital and Dilantin, I could not drive; I had to go through all kinds of medical, psychological, and blood tests. I had EEG’s, EKG’s, brain scans for tumors, stroboscopic induced seizure tests, and a host of other tests that I either don’t remember or didn’t even know what they were at the time. For the first year after having the seizure, everyone seemed to be keeping a 24-hour watch over me to see that I was all right because nobody really knew what caused the seizure. I do know my mental reactions, my sharp wit, and my ability to perform complex math in my head were all dulled by the seizure, but to what extent I cannot quantify. I have also felt that my ability to speak articulately has been dulled, but others have said they do not notice a difference.

At the end of three years, I found that it was becoming difficult to talk; the Phenobarbital was making it difficult for me to say things with the clarity I knew I should be able to accomplish. My tongue seemed to fill my mouth with no room left to move. I was able to perform everything else without too much drug-dulling influence, but I was beginning to have a hard time talking. So, and I would NOT recommend this for anyone else, I quit taking my Phenobarbital and Dilantin cold-turkey without the oversight or permission of my neurologist. When I did get around to telling my doctor he went ballistic and explained that people hallucinate and do some really crazy things when they go through Phenobarbital withdrawal. He also informed me that it was the most difficult drug on the market to stop taking. He was astounded when my only reply was that it was no problem and now I could talk as I wanted.

I went through another year or so of evaluations and to this day, nobody can tell me why I had that seizure. I tested negative for epilepsy and every other test they gave me. The best my neurologist could diagnose was that I took on far too many responsibilities as a teenager, that the 60 hours+ per week that I was working was too much, and that my desire to please others by doing my work well and keeping my grades up needed to be re-evaluated to reflect more of what pleased me than what pleased others. If his diagnosis is true, then it was all apparently self-inflicted without any conscious knowledge.

To rationalize it for myself and to learn to adapt, I had to change my ways and learn to accept things for what they are without allowing them to put me under a lot of stress. My father-in-law put to words what I had already taught myself and while it may not work for everyone, putting things in perspective will definitely not hurt anyone.

“There is no T-Rex out there and no matter how bad things get or what you might screw-up, when you step outside you will not be eaten.

It is honorable to do your work ethically and with high integrity, but it is unnecessary to compromise or sacrifice either while still managing to avoid stress if you just keep it all in perspective.

Michael E. Mould is a licensed professional engineer and flight tests airplanes for a living. On the side he operates an online bookselling business and has written the book, “Online Bookselling: A Practical Guide with Detailed Explanations and Insightful Tips,” [Paperback ISBN 1427600708, CD-ROM ISBN 1599714876] and developed “Bookkeeping for Booksellers,” a 19 sheet linked and tabbed Excel Worksheet to help online booksellers with the calculation of tax obligations and to track their business performance.

You can contact mike at: mike@online-bookselling.com and you can visit his website at:

http://www.online-bookselling.com

[tags]stress management, anger management[/tags]