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Bernice Mugambi, 23, is the reigning Miss University of Nairobi but as she enters Neurologist Paul Kioy's office she does so as one of one million people in Kenya living with epilepsy/COURTESY

Kenya

Beauty queen speaks out about epilepsy

It is for this reason that Kioy founded the Kenya Society for Epilepsy. “When you sit in a medical clinic and find this is the commonest thing you have to deal with and it is a treatable thing that is not being treated, it challenges you.”

Epilepsy, Kioy says, can be treated for as little as Sh500 a year assuming it is properly diagnosed.

“There is a wide range of symptoms that act as indicators you could be epileptic.”

Epilepsy, Kioy says, can be treated for as little as Sh500 a year assuming it is properly diagnosed/COURTESY

The flying saucer being one of them, “saucer because it happens mostly in the morning; your hand jerks and whatever you’re holding takes flight.”

“Looking back,” Bernice says, “the signs were there. I remember holding a spoon when I was in high school and having it fall out of my hands.”

A symptom Kioy says in itself is not conclusive evidence you have epilepsy but Bernice had other symptoms as well.

“My head would just drop and hit the desk or I’d just look dazed, my head would slump and my legs would begin to jerk.”

“The dazed look,” Kioy explains, “is called an absence seizure. If you are cycling, you’ll keep cycling but you won’t be conscious.”

A seizure then doesn’t always mean you’ll drop to the ground your entire body jerking and foam coming out of your mouth, I ask?

“Having an out-of-body experience, feeling like there’s water instead of blood flowing through your veins, feeling like there are insects crawling up your skin, all these could be indicators you have epilepsy.”

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And these are not the strangest symptoms an epileptic person could experience, “Activities such as eating are undertaken without thinking and you could find yourself chewing at an inappropriate time.”

Symptoms such as these fall on the milder side; epilepsy can be life threatening, “Your muscles could completely tense up or cease to function causing you to fall like a log.”

The jerking associated with epilepsy, Kioy says, leads to stigma that keeps people from seeking professional help.

“I remember people saying I must have been bewitched,” Bernice confesses, “that somebody must have spoken ill of me.”

“In some communities spiritual possession is looked upon positively but not in most. Who would want to hang around somebody they thought to be demon possessed?” Kioy adds.

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