**Amanda Bradbury** wanted to be an interior designer when she was younger. She began a course at university, but despite it being a subject she really enjoyed, found herself overwhelmed, struggling to concentrate and increasingly anxious. Eventually it became too much, and she was forced to drop out.
What Amanda didn’t know was that her problems were being caused by a tiny flaw in her brain that was making her have seizures – so-called ‘focal epilepsy’.
At first, the most obvious signs of these seizures were auras, distortions in her vision. These began when she was around 19, but her symptoms started to become increasingly more frequent and problematic. She would often find herself getting extremely anxious, struggling to focus and follow conversations, forgetting things, having difficulty speaking or even swallowing.
“One of the things that would happen before a seizure is I'd get an intense feeling of fear, which I now realise was seizure-related.”
This began to have an impact on even the simplest things, she says. “I started leaving the house a lot less because of nerves, because it can affect your memory when you have a seizure. I'd be too nervous to talk, because I would get confused. I just got more and more unsure about what was going on.”
For some time, she dismissed her symptoms. But when she moved to Cambridge to live with her sister, it became harder to ignore what was happening.
“Because I was living with someone that knows me, \[my sister\] was able to see that certain things weren't making sense. I wasn't able to focus as much or I'd be saying words that didn’t relate to anything we were doing.”
Encouraged by her sister, she sought medical help. Doctors at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, diagnosed her as having focal epilepsy. Suddenly, it all made sense to her. But what was surprising was how frequently she was having these seizures. Although she thought they were occurring a couple of times a week, brainwave recordings revealed she was actually having them multiple times a day.
Amanda was given medication to manage her condition, but despite trying three different drugs, some of which at first appeared to reduce her symptoms, none of them were ultimately effective. This was when the doctors suggested surgery.
Amanda’s lesion was large enough to be visible to 3T MRI scanners (for many patients, the lesions are not clearly visible on these scanners, which is where ultra-high field 7T MRI scanners can help). The lesion was in her amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for controlling emotions, which explained why she would feel so fearful before and during an episode.
As the Cambridge team was able to pinpoint the lesion, surgeons could then remove it.
Very soon after surgery, Amanda began to feel different – less tired, with more energy and feeling less anxious. People around her noticed a difference too as she was able to focus and concentrate more.
She uses the example of an everyday task that to most of us would seem trivial to illustrate the difference surgery has made.
“One thing I can do a lot easier now is clean the kitchen!” she says. “I can stand up, focus on what I'm doing and be chatting while I'm doing it.”
She had become so used to having seizures and to struggling day to day that it took their disappearance to show her what normality was like. She now works in office administration, but wants to get back into interior design as hobby.
“I want to try and do things that I enjoy, like interior design and things that are arty. I want to experience these things more.”
Although it took her some time to accept her diagnosis, describing it as “mentally overwhelming,” Amanda is very open about her epilepsy now. Becoming aware that she was a part a community of people living with the condition, that she was not going through these things alone, helped her, and so she wants to help others feel supported.
She also has no regrets about having had the surgery. Even though it felt like a big decision at the time, talking to the doctors and to her family made her realise that she was in safe hands and that this could really help her.
“Once I’d had the surgery, despite all the healing, it was very obviously the right decision,” she says. “Suddenly I realised I'm able to do loads of other things. It made me start to think, oh, what can I do? Things felt a lot more possible, like suddenly I'm able to do so many more things.”