Mumbai, March 13 (). Actress Fatima Sana Shaikh recently opened up on a sensitive aspect of her personal life in Soha Ali Khan’s podcast ‘All About Her’. The actress explained in detail about her disease epilepsy in this episode.
The specialty of Soha’s podcast is that when a guest talks about his illness, Soha also calls a doctor who is an expert in that subject. Something similar happened during the time of Fatima also. Neurologist Dr. Jayanti Mani was also present with him. In this podcast, the neurologist explained this in detail to both the actresses.
Soha said, “During the shooting of ‘Dangal’ you were diagnosed with epilepsy.”
Fatima said, “It was a very painful experience for me. As soon as I understood that I was going to have a seizure, I informed the people present there, but no one knew about it, but luckily Aamir Khan and Sania were present there. I bit Sania unknowingly and her hand started bleeding. I have no memory of that incident. All I know is that I got very scared, fainted and then was in the hospital.”
Fatima told that initially many people did not take it seriously. Some thought it was a way to get attention or perhaps caused by some drug. Fatima said, “I was surprised when the doctor told my parents not to take it seriously. This is a common thing.”
The neurologist explained that epilepsy is also common in women. He said, “A single seizure is called ‘seizure’. If it happens again and again, it is called ‘epilepsy’.”
Fatima told that initially she was in denial. She used to think, “I’m not crazy, why am I being given medicines?”
The neurologist said that most people think of seizures as just “trembling and falling”, but even if the reports are normal, it can be epilepsy.
Fatima told that due to this problem her personal and professional life was greatly affected. She said, “Because of this disease, I was away from social life. There is no sympathy. People isolate me. I isolated myself.”
The neurologist gave an example, explaining that flashing lights in the Pokemon game had increased seizures in children, which shows that epilepsy is affected by certain triggers.
Fatima said that her condition is not more serious than other patients. Some children suffer 5-10 seizures a day, while 80 percent of seizures stop on their own within 1-2 minutes. There is concern in only 20 percent of cases. She also shared that along with epilepsy, she also struggled with bulimia (an eating disorder).
She said, “Whenever I used to go to someone’s house, the first thing I would do was open the fridge. I had a very dangerous relationship with food, but now I have learned to handle it.”
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ns/abm
