Susan Sontag famously argued that we should see "illness as metaphor". But Finlay Darlington-Bell, the author of this article, who was diagnosed with epilepsy in July last year, argues we should see illness as story. To help him cope, he immersed himself in the history and folklore around the disease, which has been seen as both satanic and sacred throughout history. Darlington-Bell came to the following belief: narrativising your disease and your experience helps you to cope with it and ultimately survive it. This is not Sontag's 'illness as metaphor' but 'illness as story'.

In late July last year, on a Ryanair flight back from the Greek island of Kos, I had an experience that changed the course of my life forever. Impossibly tired and in a post-holiday stupor, I transferred from Kos to London Stansted, and then onto an internal flight from London to Cornwall. The take-off, with its predictable yet somewhat comforting safety demonstration, went smoothly, and I slowly drifted asleep.

In a sea of clouds, I awoke around twenty minutes later in a state of distress. With a pulsating headache, sweat pouring down my temples, and a pressing urge to go to the toilet to throw up, it wasn’t hard to tell that something was amiss. Before I could ask the couple next to me to vacate their seats so that I might make a desperate bid for the modest Ryanair loos, I saw a bright light appear before me. With my last thought, I wondered why I could see so many white lights with the window shut…