Immortal Andrew Johns admits he was ''scared'' after he had a seizure in a Canberra commentary box and a frightening Google search produced some ominous results.
Speaking on Fox Sports' Matty Johns Show, Johns revealed he has been diagnosed with frontal lobe epilepsy and has upped his medication just to live a normal life.
Doctors have ordered Johns not to drive a car and he isn't even able to enjoy his favourite hobby of surfing without someone monitoring him as entering the ocean alone puts his life at risk.
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Johns also said from 2016 he has suffered a seizure almost once every two months, but his condition has become more serious, smashing his head while holidaying on the NSW coast in Yamba in December.
But seeing a specialist in Melbourne has given him peace of mind and a sense his condition is able to be controlled.
‘’I’ve had a lot of scans down there and it came back that I’ve got mild frontal lobe epilepsy which can be managed by medication,’’ Johns told his brother and Knights great Matthew.
‘’I’ve been on medication for about three years for it but they’ve upped it right up. For the last two or three months since the last seizure I feel really clear.
‘’They can’t be sure what caused it, it may be something that popped up later in life, but they think maybe a contributor could be some of the concussions I’ve had and continual head knocks.
‘’I was scared before I had these final scans because like everyone when something goes wrong you Google it and it comes up with the worst scenario.
‘’But the doctors and the professors I’m seeing said ‘look, if your medication levels are right, you can live a normal life.’’
Viewers at home wouldn't have managed to pick it up, but Johns says his first seizure hit him in the commentary box during a semi-final between Canberra and Penrith in 2016.
''I was commentating and all of a sudden something came on in my body and then I went into this trance-like state and I went into this dream, it’s hard to describe, you go into this de ja vu sort of scene where you’ve been before, everything goes quiet and I don’t know – it just hit me,'' Johns said.
‘'Then I came out of it and I was sitting in the commentary box and obviously I didn’t say anything for a while but a producer came up and said ‘mate, are you alright?’ and I said ‘yeah’.
‘’Later that night I went straight to the hotel and went straight to bed which is pretty much a first, and then I wake up in the morning and I had two big puncture marks in my tongue and my tongue had swelled right up.
‘’At the time I’d been going in Newcastle, there’s a guy up there Dr Andrew Gardner who works under Professor Chris Levi who were doing studies on concussion.
‘’I went up after this first episode and said ‘look this is what happened’ they said this might be epilepsy.’’
Johns played 249 NRL games for the Knights, 23 Origins for NSW and 24 Tests for the Kangaroos.
He retired in 2007 on medical advice after being diagnosed with a bulging disc in his neck.
