Life as an athlete with epilepsy

SOME of Australia’s greatest athletes suffered epilepsy throughout their careers, keeping both the condition and their fears private.

Lance Franklin suffers from mild epilepsy.

SOME of Australia’s greatest ever sportsmen suffered epilepsy throughout their playing careers, keeping both the condition and their fears private.

Wally Lewis, widely considered the greatest rugby league player of all time, said he would have been an even better player if not for brain disorder.

“Epilepsy affected the last third of my career,” Lewis has said.

“I used to have this fear of having a seizure in front of the media, or the players, or the public.

“I knew it was going to happen, and it did.”

In 2006, Lewis’ worst fear was realised when he suffered a seizure while reading a sports news bulletin on television.

He had his first seizure at 19 years of age but only told a select few family members and friends that he was epileptic, keeping the secret for his entire playing career.

“I felt these tingles go through me and when I had to describe them ... it felt like the beginning of an orgasm but you end up on a far different path,” Lewis said of his first seizure.

News_Image_File: The King Wally Lewis kept his condition secret.

On Tuesday, the Sydney Swans confirmed superstar forward Lance Franklin suffered a mild form of epilepsy.

Franklin suffered a seizure last Friday while at a Bondi cafe and was hospitalised, but the club said the condition was unrelated to the serious health issue that has left him sidelined indefinitely.

Franklin and Lewis are among a number of high profile athletes to have played with epilepsy.

Former Socceroos captain Paul Wade also kept his condition secret as a player and, like Lewis, had a seizure on live television while working in the media.

Wade’s incident took place in 2001, when he was interviewing Socceroo Paul Okon after a match at the MCG. Okon initially thought Wade was mocking him with his hand gestures.

“I didn’t know I was having a seizure,” Wade recalled. “When I came out of the seizure, I got people telling me to get lost because they thought I was taking the mickey out of [Okon].”

Until that point, Wade refused to reveal he had the condition because he was concerned it could end both his playing and media careers.

Dating back to his childhood, Wade would always fret before something important.

“For 30 seconds, in games and before exams at school, I’d feel really, really sick like I was going to throw up, [I’d] get really hot to the point where I started sweating,” he said.

“It was scary how worked up I got that I was going to get caught.

“I would go on air and say, ‘Good afternoon,’ … and the whole time I’m thinking, ‘Oh please, just give me two hours on air where I’m not going to have a seizure.’”

News_Image_File: Paul Wade lived in fear he would have a seizure out on the field.

Late cricket legend and long-time Channel 9 commentator Tony Greig suffered his first seizure at the age of 14, during a tennis match.

“[I was] playing tennis at an inter-schools match I had a grand mal seizure, a full-on seizure, so that’s where my life and the life of my family sort of turned upside down,” Greig said in 2010.

Greig was able to control the condition throughout his life with medication.

Another successful cricketer, South African Jonty Rhodes, found out he had epilepsy at a young age.

He remembered being the only player on the cricket field as a child wearing a helmet as a precaution, before they became mandatory.

“I was about six years old when my family realised something was ‘wrong’,” Rhodes said.

“I kept falling about and getting knocked out.

“Eventually after several tests, I was identified as having epilepsy, and made aware of the various precautions I should take — such as not playing rugby, as my type of epilepsy is triggered by head injury.

“You can imagine how challenging this was at Maritzburg College, where every boy played rugby unless there was something ‘wrong’ with them.

“I also had to be careful when playing hockey, and back in 1982, I was the only child on the cricket field wearing a helmet. These days it has obviously changed.”

News_Image_File: Jonty Rhodes was one of the greatest fielders in cricket history.

Rhodes was diagnosed with a mild form of epilepsy and required no medication to manage the condition during his playing career.

“A ‘mild’ form of epilepsy means that my seizures are only activated by a concussion, and as such I do not need medication and can drive/move around fairly easily,” Rhodes explained.

“This is not the case for many other people though who have a more severe form of epilepsy.

“Some are not permitted to drive (for fear of a seizure) or to operate heavy machinery.

“That said, most people with epilepsy live a very normal life and should not be discriminated against either socially or in the work place.”