The Beginning

This first entry in my story doesn’t start with epilepsy, but this is how it all began.

In the early hours of December 1st, 2006, I woke up in my apartment in Reading, England. I immediately called the emergency services.
“What’s the nature of your emergency?” they asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What’s your name?”
That’s when it hit me. “I don’t know.”

Less than an hour later, I was being resuscitated in the back of an ambulance.

While I was on life support, the toxicology report came back—clean as a whistle. I became the highest priority case in the ICU; doctors didn’t expect me to survive the night. The MRI scans were a disaster: meningococcal meningitis and encephalitis.

Two days later, doctors told my family they’d be taking me off life support. They gathered around, not knowing the outcome. “Hold on just a moment,” my mother said. She went down to the Royal Berkshire Hospital gift shop and bought a disposable camera. Click.

The machine turned off.
I took my first breath. On my own.

A week later, a call came through to the hospital ward.
“Hello, who is this?” the man asked.
“It’s Kieran, the person you were calling.”
“I’m so sorry… we didn’t expect you to be alive.”
It was the university chaplain, calling to confirm my death.¹

And yet here I was.

That night still feels like a fairytale. The 45-minute call to emergency services never revealed my name or location². I stopped breathing just two minutes after being placed in the ambulance.

I’d somehow wandered into the street in pajamas, screaming for help. Cars drove around me.

But a stranger walking up Castle Hill saw me and called for help. Had that call come just five minutes later, I wouldn’t be telling this story. I never found out who they were, but I owe them everything.

This was the beginning of a new journey I never saw coming.