I had taken a break from my job as a midwife at the Coombe to study public health nursing at UCD when I experienced intermittent hemiparesis - weakness on one side of my body - during migraine attacks. I took no notice. The next thing that happened I couldn't ignore: I had a stroke and in hospital they found a benign brain tumour. I was totally angry and I told everyone it was only a tumour and I was going to get it taken out and that was it. Some friendships were cemented even further during that time, as I began to accept that you can take as well as give.

Epilepsy has given me lots of insights. As a nurse, you really think as a professional you have an understanding of what patients are going through, but what you read in books gives you no idea. It's the things that are said on the ward when the lights go out. I never say to people anymore: "I understand how you feel". It was only when I stood in the shower cubicle in the hospital crying my eyes out that I really knew what it felt like. I found it so humiliating to have people handling my body, I'm sure everybody does. After the denial and the anger, I experienced depression, partly because of the sight of myself in the mirror looking bald and white and underweight. For two years I couldn't sleep enough, then for two years I had trouble sleeping, now I'm back to normal. Another disadvantage of epilepsy was that I tended to feel anxious in unfamiliar or crowded environments because seizures are frightening experiences. It's been a long time since I've had a fit, but when I did I remained conscious as my body went into spasm and for minutes my mind could not control my body.

My anxiety came from the fact that well-intentioned people may, in their misinformed enthusiasm to help, put the person having the seizure at increased risk of harm. The best thing to do is reassure the person having the seizure by talking calmly and the seizure will run its course. The seizure will not in itself harm the person, but the environment or attending personnel can if, for example, they try to force open the mouth. I overcame my anxiety through counselling, breathing exercises, homeopathy and acupuncture - trial and error, really. Alternative treatments can help a lot.

The setback of epilepsy led me to explore alternative careers because, after 16 years nursing, I had to find a new way to earn my living. I wanted to build on my existing skills and knowledge after a boring year's work in pharmacovigilance - collecting data on adverse reactions to drugs. So I went to Zambia with Irish Aid, the Department of Foreign Affairs development organisation. A lot of people were against me going. They said, what happens if you get malaria? I got it and I got tick fever and other things and I survived them all. If I hadn't gone, I would still be in a desk job feeling unchallenged. In Zambia, I supervised the building and designing of maternity clinics and developed and implemented training programmes for midwives. I was there in the middle of the AIDS epidemic and 39 per cent of my colleagues were HIV positive. As I was leaving Zambia, I experienced massive emotional burn-out following the funeral of my friend and colleague Maggie Zulu, who died of cerebral malaria having been mis-diagnosed in hospital. After two-and-a-half years, I was happy to come home because the AIDS epidemic in central Africa is distressing and we can all only do so much to help.

I met my husband, Mike, in Zambia. Thanks to his maternal grandmother who was born in Arbour Hill, he has Irish citizenship and we returned to live here a year ago. He's the best, most gentle person and his calmness and confidence are reassuring on those now rare occasions when I have had a seizure.

I'm nothing special. Sometimes you have to fall down flat to learn your full resources. I didn't welcome these life changes and I miss my car because I'm not allowed a driving licence. It's not easy to keep going and my story is not a testimony to how wonderful life is now I've seen the light. But epilepsy is well managed nowadays and for those of us who are adjusting, there is help out there and I cannot recommend Brainwave, the Irish Epilepsy Association, highly enough.

In conversation with Kathryn Holmquist

Brainwave can be contacted at 4557500