Jerry Kill suffers seizure after NU game

is when they hit. You wouldn't want something like this to happen while you were driving down the expressway.

According to his physician there's no reason he can't live a "normal lifestyle" with this condition. And Kill's own comments have been things like "while you're unconscious there isn't much you can do...once you come to, you get up and go to practice" and "what am I supposed to do, sit on the sofa and wait for the next one?"

I do respect the way he handles this.

they're usually completely benign.

Seizures come in all shapes on sizes, from loss of conscioussness and convulsions, to smelling something funny that isn't really there.  

Seizures are only life threatening if an cannot be stopped (seizing for >5-10 minutes nonstop), but this isn't very common for patients medicated appropriately.  Other smaller risks are there, obviously, like biting your tongue, injuring yourself while convulsing, etc.  But a simple self-limiting seizure, by itself, is benign.  

However, the prevailing theory is that repeated seizures can harm the brain.

This is pretty much what the neurologist who specializes in seizures told us at my daughter's last doctor's visit. 

And as to driving, most states require someone with a seizure disorder to get clearance from a neurologist and have been seizure free for a certain period of time, such as 6 months.  We don't really know how many seizures Kill has had since taking on the job.  We know the ones that have occurred during games, but there is a possibility that he's had others we just don't know about.

I'm glad he seems able to bounce right back after a seizure.  When my daughter has one, it usually triggers one or two others an hour or two later, and she essentially has to take at least a day or two to recover.

That would be an interesting legal case if they decide to fire him because of his seizures.

Obvious joke is stupid, obviously.  You have the wit of a 14 year old.

The belief used to be that there were few or no long-term negative effects of seizures, but that thinking is changing.  Here are a few bullet points from a 2003 conference that dealt with the issue:

• Prolonged seizures are clearly capable of injuring the brain.
• Isolated, brief seizures are likely to cause negative changes in brain function and possibly loss of specific brain cells. This is not true for all forms of epilepsy, however, and is likely to be highly dependent upon the type of seizure and the specific cause of the epilepsy.

http://www.epilepsy.com/articles/ar_1064856376

The type of seizures that Kill is having, what they used to call grand mal, but now call tonic-clonic, are likely to cause more damage than other kinds of seizures.  In fact, in my daughter's case, a series of tonic-clonic seizures has affected her brain to the point that she now also has absence seizures (one of the types that used to be called petit mal).  Some people have dozens or even hundreds of these absence seizures per day, and others might not even notice them. The right balance of drugs and avoidence of things like stress, fatigue, alcohol and caffeine can help reduce the liklihood of seizures.