"You feel embarrassed when you are coming out of it," he said. "There are so many people standing around looking at you. They are looking at you out of concern, but that's not your first reaction."

When Oliver heard about Bryson, he said he was immediately relieved no one was hurt.

"I have had one before when I was driving," Oliver said. "I know the fear behind that. When you come out of it, you don't know what happened. You are just hoping you didn't injure anyone."

Frank Chavez, 63, a retired parole agent in California, had his first seizure in 1999 while driving his daughter's car. He was later told that he got off the freeway, hit a black van and just kept going.

"I lived about two blocks away and instinctively I just drove that car right home," he said. "I started walking up the driveway."

He was putting the key in the door when he heard a man screaming. The man was yelling that Chavez should have stopped after the accident.

Chavez has frequent and serious seizures, is on medication and has even undergone surgeries to try to stop them.

"This is a disease that jumps out of nowhere," said Chavez's wife, Patricia. "We used to call it the monster. We never knew when it would jump out."

When her husband's seizures begin, Patricia Chavez first asks God to let him live. Then she looks at the clock to time the seizure and tries to turn her husband on his side to help him breathe. She tries to stay calm and talk to her husband.

At some point, Frank Chavez understands his wife is talking to him. "I'll hear my wife and she'll tell me, 'Frank, Frank,' " he said. "I do hear her. I just can't do the things she wants me to do."

The lack of control is something you have to deal with, said people living with seizures.

"You become 200% vulnerable to your surroundings and to (other people's) knowledge of what is happening to you," said Jones of the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Los Angeles.

"If I have a seizure in public and I'm next to a bunch of broken glass, are they going to be able to react? Are they going to forgive me when I can't react and listen to them? It's part of the education process. Your brain has just suffered this huge electrical brainstorm."

Heck said anyone living with epilepsy that is not well-controlled should seek out neurologists who are highly trained in managing epilepsy. She and others urge people to seek out information about seizures and epilepsy.

"The biggest misconception is that it is a disease of the young and that it is something you are only going to see in a younger kid or a younger adult," Sirven said. "This is actually a condition that affects all age groups, and older adults seem to have a higher propensity for this. This is not uncommon."

Soo Ihm, 41, was diagnosed with epilepsy when she was 6 or 7. She said she gets frustrated that more people with epilepsy don't speak out. People who haven't had seizures need to understand there is nothing to be afraid of, she said.

"People don't understand the full spectrum of seizures and also the idea of a seizure," Ihm said. "It looks so different and people don't know what to do when you are having one. Epilepsy has such a range of experiences. Seizures can last from a second to several minutes. You can be fully aware, you can lose total consciousness or anywhere in between. "

For information about seizures and epilepsy, go to: http://epilepsyfoundation.org/ and http://www.epilepsy.com/.