It started with a migraine, not even five minutes after the fireworks show began. Damon Thorne tried to look away but the entire sky was lit up. "Even closing my eyes -- I could still see the fireworks through my eyelids," he says.
Then, his right hand began to quiver. Little points of light, much like the "stars" that compose a firework's bloom, panned across his field of view. This was Thorne's "aura," visible only to him, and a warning sign that a seizure was about to happen.
"Next thing I remember, I was waking up in the hospital," says Thorne, who has epilepsy. "Come to find out I had some massive grand mal seizure."
The incident at the St. Louis County Fair and Air Show in 2006 would become the first indication to Thorne that...