Without warning, the ground starts shaking, there is a clatter of noise in the background, the lights go out, but then everything gets quiet again. What seems like forever is really only 30 seconds.

Slowly the fog clears and everything returns back to normal.

The lights resume and I find myself standing up, walking and looking around. I don’t remember a single thing.

I just had a seizure.

It’s been a little over a month now since I have had one. Aug. 11. That was the date. I had five that day. And one just happened to strike when I was in English class, taking a quiz.

I don’t remember what happened; only my teacher and my classmates do. The only thing I know is one minute I had blacked out and the next I was standing up. I felt like someone who had just woken from a half-hour nap, not feeling too refreshed.

For about two years, my family and I have been trying to find the answer to these “dizzy spells,” as they were initially called. Not originally knowing they were seizures, we treated them just as little bouts of dizziness, thinking they were caused by my height.

It must have taken five seizures in order for us to open our eyes, realize there was something to this and enter the doors of the doctor’s office.

The doctor immediately diagnosed me with having complex partial seizures, which is a form of epilepsy. He explained that I experienced auras, otherwise known as simple partial seizures, a sign that another seizure is beginning; this is when I undergo visual and physical changes, such as feelings of numbness on a particular side of the body.

Following the auras, I become “out of touch” and lose consciousness and start to make involuntary movements that are repetitive and purposeless. I fidget, smack my lips and walk around; I say things that make sense but don’t connect. I am completely unaware of my surroundings and what is taking place.

After all of this takes place, I am suddenly “normal” again, though I appear to have left my head in a heavy fog.

After a two-hour visit, my family and I stepped out into the parking lot and stared at each other as if to say, “Ok, what now?”

I was scared, terrified. There was only one question on my mind. Is there something wrong with my brain?

The question was soon answered. After completing too many tests, an EEG, a $4,000 MRI and being injected with a rare earth element, the answer was finally found.

My MRI returned normal, meaning I didn’t have any structural problems with my brain. But the EEG results were not what my doctor was looking for, verifying my diagnosis of complex partial seizures.

I thought to myself, “All right, I can deal with this.”

My outlook was squashed when I was told that I was not able to drive for at least six months. Although it was hard, I have accepted this fact.

In the past month, I will have to admit my life has been shaken up a bit. I am extremely grateful for the fact that my seizures are able to be controlled; I thank God every day because things could be much worse. But after being diagnosed with complex partial seizures, I now have an understanding of a new part of life.

I have developed some new appreciation for old, wise sayings: don’t lament those things which have passed. Live in the present; treat each day as if it were a gift and keep your feet moving forward, no matter what obstacle may jump in your way.