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Skydiving

Thu, 06/29/2006 - 13:05
I have been involved in skydiving for about 3 years now. I've done 121 solo jumps and 3 tandems. Unfortunately, I have had 2 grand mal seizures now (both since I started jumping). I had pretty much written off the 1st grand mal to "bad luck" but now that I've had my 2nd in 2 1/2 years I believe that it is likely to occur again in the future. I am curious if anyone else with Epilepsy is also a skydiver and how it has concerned him or her?

Comments

Re: Re: Skydiving

Submitted by gretchen1 on Sun, 2006-07-02 - 23:59
Ramblinman? Go away - lol. Keep in mind airplanes/jets are pressurized. There is a slight depression of atmospheric pressure on take off and landing in a pressurized vessel, but not enough to warn those at risk. However driving a vehicle is not pressurized and if you are like me, and I live in the mountains so I go up and down a lot, my ears pop constantly. Once we decided to go over a pass we heard was beautiful. It was a little over 14,000 feet. I had had a concussion about a month before but was given a clean bill of health at that time. I kept falling asleep as we got closer to the summit, at least that's what I thought but my cognition was splat between my "naps" too. My husband was unaware of this until we got close to the top and I started talking about people from my high school days as if it were current. By the time we got to the top I managed to maintain enough consciousness to look over the vista and it was all in pastels. What I thought I saw isn't possible. It looked like a scene from Bambi, seriously. My husband knew by the time we were approaching the summit I was in trouble, decided to make a run to get over the pass and down again but wound up having the Rangers copter me down instead. I was hospitalized for 2 days - with pastel Bambi's flitting around. I currently live on the Continental Divide, quite high so I thought I'd be safe. Your fixation many of us call mesmerized. That's not necessarily a medical term, one adopted on a thread. Where you start looking at something and can't stop? I do this often. Usually for me it's a certain color or specific movement, but I'm sure it can just happen in an aura too just because you're having an aura or simple. I think you are saying you feel sky jumping is not safe for you. You may need personal justification to stop this hobby. I find that too is not unusual. Most of us need confirmation in our lives involving some activity we either should not or can not participate in again. I will say if you continue, do not do tandem jumps. That is not fair to the other. But I am not lecturing you. For the first 3 years or so after I was diagnosed I probably did the most dangerous things I've ever done in my life. Crazy things I'd never done before and probably wouldn't have done then but I was angry and I wanted to "show" people. It was really showing myself, and I lost. Now I'm more practical. I still struggle tho. I do have one activity I still participate in that is potentially dangerous - I am hired to train out problematic behaviors in dogs,some of which out weigh me, many of which are aggressive. I just finished up my last client and I am seriously thinking about the danger of this to me. Twice I've been to the emergency room from dog bites just in the last few months. I have to ask myself why I do this because really, I don't charge, I donate my time - and my arm and rear end that got bitten. Gretchen

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