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An impassioned plea to help someone having a seizure leads to some much-needed education

Here's what to do and what not to do if you witness someone having a seizure.

Photo by Agê Barros on Unsplash, @littlehuz/X

There are some specific do's and don'ts in seizure first aid.

What should you do if you witness someone having a seizure?

Many of us have learned the basics of CPR or the Heimlich maneuver, even if we've never had to utilize those skills in real life. But seizures are a whole different ball game, and many people may not know what to do if they witness someone having one.

It’s important to learn what various medical events look like and what to and not do when they happen, because sometimes interventions that seems helpful can actually do harm, which is the case when someone is having a seizure.

A seizure is a sudden burst of uncontrolled electrical signals in the brain. There are many different kinds of seizures, but the most visibly recognizable kinds can cause a person’s body to become stiff, contort, convulse and/or twitch involuntarily. From the outside, a seizure can look painful, but most of the time the person seizing is not experiencing pain. Seizures can also appear to be frightening, as the person may lose control of their facial expressions, might gasp or gurgle or moan and may drool or foam at the mouth.

A thread on X showcases how someone with good intentions can react to witnessing a seizure in ways that can cause more harm than good, and the discussion led to some valuable education about what to do and not do if you see someone having a seizure.

The original tweet in the thread came from a person who was at the gym when they saw a girl experiencing a seizure. As they tried to get closer to help her, someone else said, “Give her space, don’t touch her.”

“She was lying in a pool of her own saliva with full body convulsions,” the person wrote, “And you’re telling me to leave her alone? This is why the west is a failed society. A person can be dying in front of them and they’d be too scared to ‘touch’ someone.”

The person said they “held her face up so she could breathe and not lay in spit” and rubbed her back until she stopped convulsing, wiped her face and the mat of her saliva after she came to and rubbed her hand while waiting for the paramedics to arrive “so she didn’t feel alone.”

The person went on to lament about how “dark” the world is. “The lack of socialization has made the youth weak in ways you can’t imagine. The cowardice stems from lack of intuition and actual empathy,” they wrote.

They then implored people to “take care of your neighbors” and “do the right thing even if you’re scared to offend,” which undoubtedly came from a kind-hearted place. But as many people with expertise and experience in managing seizures pointed out in response, what the person did was not entirely the "right thing" to do in this situation.

Many people who have seizure disorders chimed in to say it's actually best not to touch them when they are seizing as it can actually lead to injury. Holding a seizing person's head isn't the proper way to keep them from choking or to protect their head.

However, the advice to not touch the person at all is not a hard and fast rule, either. According to the CDC, here are the proper things to do if you are worried that the seizing person might injure themselves:

  • If they are upright, help ease them gently to the floor.
  • Turn the person gently onto one side. This will help the person breathe.
  • Clear the area around the person of anything hard or sharp. This can prevent injury.
  • Put something soft and flat, like a folded jacket, under his or her head.
  • Remove eyeglasses.
  • Loosen ties or anything around the neck that may make it hard to breathe.
  • Time the seizure. Call 911 if the seizure lasts longer than 5 minutes.

As for what not to do, the CDC lists:

  • Do not hold the person down or try to stop his or her movements.
  • Do not put anything in the person’s mouth. This can injure teeth or the jaw. A person having a seizure cannot swallow his or her tongue.
  • Do not try to give mouth-to-mouth breaths (like CPR). People usually start breathing again on their own after a seizure.
  • Do not offer the person water or food until he or she is fully alert.
Other ways to help:
Do keep yourself and others around you calm. Stay with the person until the seizure ends and they are fully awake. Once they are alert, tell them what happened using simple terms in a calm voice. Check to see if they are wearing a medical bracelet or have other emergency information on them. Offer to call a taxi or someone the person knows to make sure they get home safely.

Seizures aren't fun but they're usually not life-threatening. The CDC says you only need to call 911 if:

  • The person has never had a seizure before.
  • The person has difficulty breathing or waking after the seizure.
  • The seizure lasts longer than 5 minutes.
  • The person has another seizure soon after the first one.
  • The person is hurt during the seizure.
  • The seizure happens in water.
  • The person has a health condition like diabetes, heart disease, or is pregnant.
Hopefully discussion the post sparked on X led to more people educating themselves on seizure first aid so we can all be a little more prepared.

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When one Houston doctor couldn't get to his hospital, he jumped in a canoe.

When Houston doctor Stephen Kimmel was called in to Clear Lake Regional Medical Center for an emergency surgery Tuesday, he quickly realized he'd have to improvise.

Though his own house was flooding, the pediatric general surgeon raced toward the hospital, mindful that his teenage patient, Jacob Terrazas, could suffer permanent damage if his testicular condition wasn't treated immediately.

When a flooded highway prevented Kimmel's car from going any farther, he joined forces with two volunteer firefighters, armed with a secret weapon: a canoe.

The group paddled down what was, just one week earlier, a crowded highway, and dropped off Kimmel roughly a mile from the hospital. He walked the rest of the way through water that swelled to his waist.

Kimmel with Terrazas and family after the surgery. Photo by Clear Lake Regional Medical Center.

"Sometimes you have to do whatever it takes," Kimmel said in a press release. "This young man’s life would have been changed for the worse forever if we hadn’t been able to perform surgery when we did. In the end, it all turned out very well."

The catastrophic early days of Hurricane Harvey have seen dozens of stories of volunteers from Houston and beyond going to extraordinary lengths to assist their neighbors.

On Monday, over 100 members of the "Cajun Navy," a Louisiana-based group of volunteer rescuers, descended on the city and ferried residents to safety in personal watercraft.

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images.

That same day, a group of Houstonians formed a human chain to rescue a neighbor in labor.

Thanks to Kimmel's long, damp slog, Terrazas' surgery was a success. The 16-year-old is expected to be released from the hospital soon.  

"This has been a long night, but this place is wonderful," Terrazas' mother, Yesenia, said of the hospital and its staff.

She and her son will soon be on their way home with good news. All thanks to one doctor, two seafaring firefighters, and their determination to get the job done.

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Trans people react to the opening of a new clinic for trans kids and teens.

Life-saving and life-changing health care.

A new clinic geared toward St. Louis transgender teens hopes to be a sort of one-stop shop for supporting trans youth.

After opening the first week of August, St. Louis' Transgender Center of Excellence is already booked through mid-September. It's one location complete with mental health, hormones, and other essential services, and it's getting rave reviews from patients already.

"Having support and acceptance is extremely important for this patient population," Dr. Christopher Lewis, physician and founder of the clinic, told WGN News. "Transgender patients already deal with harassment and discrimination within the medical community and that is a barrier to them accessing care."

A supportive medical environment is a big win for trans kids — take it from others, like myself, who wish those resources existed when we were growing up.

On Twitter, I reached out to my trans followers to find out what this type of clinic would have meant to them when they were younger. A few common themes emerged.

For many, it would have meant help and support for themselves and their parents.

Others remarked on how a supportive environment would have encouraged them to stop hiding, sidestepping some traumatic early-life experiences.

It would have provided a sense of identity for those who felt alone and isolated, who never saw accurate reflections of themselves in the media.

Then, the emails started rolling in. "If I'd had the words, if I'd known the concepts, if I had a supportive and professional environment to turn to. I would have been able to live without a dysphoria that came close to killing me, repeatedly," writes Alvhild Sand, a trans woman from Norway, about what a difference a resource like this would have made for her.

"It would have been fantastic if such a place had existed," writes Gwyn Ciesla, another trans woman, who grew up in a "highly Catholic town in the 1980s" where she was "not exposed to LGBTQ ideas or openly LGBTQ people."

"The only tools available were in the context of education, religion, and mental health, and were ineffective because they were incomplete," Ciesla explains. "If I had known then what I know now, and a clinic like this had been available, it would have been life-changing."

"Given what I did and didn't know at the time, I might not have been able to get to the point where I could take advantage of the clinic's services," Ciesla admits, expressing hope that "the presence of the clinic might have at least increased the information available to me and helped me to understand and begin to accept myself years earlier."

"I only survived my youth by a narrow margin, and I think this clinic might have widened that margin a lot. I hope this clinic can do that for youth now and in the future."

The new clinic in St. Louis joins a handful of other trans-specific children's medical programs across the country.

One of the most notable is the gender development services at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago. The sad fact is that even though the Affordable Care Act effectively banned discriminating against people on the basis of their gender identity, many trans people continue to face either discrimination or confusion from their health care providers.

According to the National Center for Transgender Equality's 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, 33% of trans people who saw a health care provider in the previous year had at least one negative experience, were denied care, or had to actually teach their provider about trans patients. In other words, there's a lot of work to be done, and taking steps to ensure trans people have competent, knowledgeable medical care is a work in progress.

The new clinic in St. Louis is a big step in the right direction, providing care and benefits for years to come.

Family

One mom went against the grain for her kids' health care. It paid off in the best way.

True
Cigna 2017

Remember when doctors making house calls was a thing?

I mean, it feels like every other TV doctor still does it. But in real life, we don't see it all that often.

Image via iStock.

During the 1930s, around 40% of all interactions between doctors and patients happened during house calls. But by 1980, it had dropped to less than 1%.

That's because with the advent of more advanced (and larger) medical equipment, it just made more sense for patients to travel to their doctors instead of the other way around. Until now.

Today, house calls are coming back in a big way.  

With more mobile medical equipment being developed and new apps designed to connect patients and doctors faster than ever, in-home health care has become much more convenient.

Enter Charlie Wetmore. He's on the front line, providing his expertise to a very important part of our community: children. And he's getting kids to pay attention to their health unlike ever before.

"One of the main things you'll notice with a house call is that the child is in a very familiar and very comfortable environment," Charlie says. "You're able to do a more thorough examination."

Check out how he's making a huge impact with one family right here:

A guy who makes house calls and instills healthy habits in your kids: Meet Charlie.

Posted by Upworthy on Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Wetmore is a do-it-all pediatric nurse practitioner with a mission to bring health care straight to the home.

That was just what Nicole Childs, a mother of three, needed for her family. "People don't make house calls, so I took a chance," she explains. "I'm glad I did. Because now I know, if at 2 o'clock in the morning, somebody wakes up with a fever, Charlie's gonna answer my phone call."

All screenshots via Cigna.

From strep throat to diaper rash to ear infections, Charlie can treat almost anything that a young patient is going through. But for Charlie, it's ultimately all about making sure the kids stay healthy.

"Prevention is the key," he says.

That's one of the main messages Charlie preaches. "Teaching the child from a young age to pursue a healthy lifestyle," he explains, "will pay great dividends as they get older and they begin to encounter those more sophisticated elements like your BMI and your cholesterol and your blood pressure."

"It's very difficult to evoke the need to change if they didn't already have the foundation as a young child."

Granted, it can be hard to educate kids on the importance of healthy choices. That's why schools across the country are coming together to provide 54 million children with the health education they need to adopt healthy behaviors and improve their quality of life.

In fact, Charlie has the perfect medium to get that same message across with his own patients: himself.

Charlie always makes sure he's setting a great example with his own health.

"If you're healthy, it's a little easier to project that image and give those messages out," he says. "So I try to live a healthy lifestyle. I know my [health] numbers."

And for any person — young or old — that's an important way to go if you're just starting to pay attention to preventive care. Knowing your four health numbers — blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, and body mass index (BMI) — can be the difference-maker you need.

Plus, if you need any additional assistance down the line, Cigna offers customers a 24-hour health information line, with nurses available to answer your health-related questions and give you information on when and where you should get treatment, as well as telehealth programs ready to connect you with a board-certified doctor via secure video chat or phone. For example, the Cigna Telehealth Connection connects customers to doctors who can help them get the care they need, including many prescriptions, for a variety of conditions day or night from wherever they are.

So whether you still go to the doctor's office or prefer a home visit, what matters is you're taking control of your health and your family's.

That's the beauty of house calls making a comeback: It's giving more people more options than ever to find the solution that works perfectly for them. But if making the trip to your doctor is still the best way for you, that's awesome too!

Learn more about how to take control of your health at Cigna.com/TakeControl.

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