At first, the Taree resident thought maybe she was having blood pressure or hormonal issues and consulted her doctor, but nothing was revealed.

After that, she said the episodes started coming in clusters, every five or six weeks she would have the same “strange feeling”, followed by a wave of heat, nausea and feeling faint.

“It was like a build up over the weeks would finally be released,” is how Carolyn explained it.

She was 57 years old when she discovered she had epilepsy; although it would take several years after that first incident to be fully diagnosed.

She knows now that the “strange feeling” was a seizure, but at the time she referred to them as “hissy fits.”

“They would only last a minute and felt like a brain freeze, like when you eat something cold,” Carolyn said.

With the attacks being more frequent, her doctor sent her for scans and an MRI, but nothing was uncovered.

Two years after she first consulted her doctor, she was referred to a visiting neurologist who thought she had epilepsy and prescribed her medication. But when medication didn’t stop her seizures, he simply increased her dose. 

As the dose got higher, the side effects started to kick in - unsteadiness and tremors.

She was then referred to a different neurologist who performed a sleep test on her, but when the seizures hit, his equipment didn’t appear to pick up anything. So he declared she didn’t have epilepsy, took her off the medication and told her she could drive again.

One morning, while she was making the bed, she got “that” feeling and sat down in a chair. Her husband found her unconscious and couldn’t wake her. When she finally came to, she got up and returned to making the bed, not realising that she had loss consciousness. 

It was during her five days at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPA) in Sydney, consistently hooked up to a monitor, with a third neurologist, that she was finally diagnosed with epilepsy.

Carolyn was finally given the right medication to keep her seizure free.

She was told she probably had been having seizures for many years before without noticing. She does recall when she was growing up that she would sometimes faint when she was getting sick. Her father was also diagnosed with epilepsy later in life, although the condition may not be hereditary.

Her best advice for people who may be experiencing something similar is to keep records of the episodes and get someone to video it. Part of the delay in her diagnosis was that her seizures were so sporadic it was difficult for a doctor to witness one.

March 26 is Purple Day, an awareness day which aims to encourage people to talk about epilepsy and to remind those who live with seizures, that they are not alone.

Wear purple on this day to show you are aware, 

for those who have epilepsy will recognise you care.

Many hundreds of thousands suffer from this complaint, 

please observe the signs if someone near you should faint.

There are many types and forms of a seizure,

it maybe just a blank stare or a mild amnesia.

While others may shake and fall to the ground,

in a minute or two they usually come round.

So keep them safe, try and stay calm,

and maybe even hold their palm.

A sufferer