Hi Everyone,
So from the title of the post you can see that the post is a little bit different than usual but I am going to talk about the condition I have had for a while now and that is Epilepsy. In June 2015 I woke up on a Sunday morning and I made my way downstairs as usual to sit down and see my family, but I started twitching non - stop for 45 minutes and I at that point had no clue whatsoever what was happening to me or what was going on. Obviously I was frightened and I didn't know what to do and neither did my parents and the twitching would not stop so they took me to the Accident & Emergency Department at the hospital, we didn't have to wait long and the doctors took me into a room where they took vials of blood to test and also gave me a blood pressure test as well. These both came back as normal tests so it was nothing to do with either of these areas of my body, so the doctors then sent me to another hospital in which I had an EEG (electroencephalogram) which tests your brain activity and sees if particular lights or activities spike the waves in your brain and helps to figure out what type of condition you have. I then also had to have an MRI which was terrifying and I was entered into a tunnel shaped machine in which you cannot move for 20 minutes and there are massively loud sounds coming from the machine that you have to wear headphones because of, this ran a test of my whole body and was able to see what was going on throughout my system.
Finally after that I was diagnosed with Absence Epilepsy, a condition which means that you can have anywhere from 1 - 100 absences where you blank out and are not aware of your surroundings for 10 - 45 seconds every day. I was given a prescription of anti - epileptic medication of Lamotrigine and Folic Acid which seemed to work, up until Christmas of 2015. I was on a 1 day cruise with my family in Sweden and I got up in the middle of the night and turned a light on and then the next day I suddenly started twitching again which was a shock to my system. After that we went back to see my doctors and they did more blood tests which were normal and he put me on a mix of Lamotrigine and an anti - epileptic drug called Keppra until I could stop taking the first drug and just take the second to see if it would work better, this really did work and the absences were stopped and I did not have anymore problems and everything was going well...
This was until September of 2016, it was my second day of my final year in high school and I thought everything was going to be fine and it would be a better year and I had nearly got to school when all of a sudden I just passed out, no memory of it happening but it was like I fainted and I bit my tongue when it happened. I woke up about 15 minutes later not knowing what had happened and feeling disorientated, so my mum took me to the hospital again because this was a new symptom and it was more worrying than the last. I had to have another EEG where there were yet again spikes in my brain that showed I had a type of Epilepsy except this time I did not have Absence Epilepsy anymore it had evolved into full - blown Idiopathic Generalised Epilepsy which is a condition with a strong genetic underlying basis. For example, everyone is born with an epileptic barrier and it can take one thing for them to hit that barrier and become epileptic or they can never get it, I just happened to hit the barrier of epilepsy on that day of school and everything happened from there. I had to up my medication by a serious amount of milligrams and the condition was becoming a real pain for me. I would have seizures a lot and each time I would bite my tongue causing me to have trouble eating for the next week. October was definitely the worst month for my epilepsy with there being almost a whole week of me being off school from having seizures on the way there, I became behind with my work and it has caused me to still be off schedule to this day which is really unhelpful when doing A - Levels. I continued to have a lot of seizures and ended up in many hospitals up until December 10th 2016, that was my last seizure as of now, I have been able to stop taking the medication that makes me really drowsy and things are slightly better now. There is a constant worry it will return but I have to hope it won't and also it just kind of annoyed me that being the legal driving age and not being able to drive was a possibility for me.
The worst parts about Epilepsy were definitely the side effects of the medication (apart from the seizures themselves of course) memory loss is a huge part of anti - epileptic drugs and they make it difficult for information to be taken in and retained by the brain because the lobes are affected by the drugs, when doing revision or work this has made it difficult for me and I am trying now to get better now that the seizures are more under control. The weakness I feel when under medication is not something I enjoy and that is why I want to get back to full capacity as much as possible, although I did decide to have a half mute doctors appointment the other day when at the hospital my doctor decided it would be a good idea if she talked to me about Epilepsy and having a baby RIGHT NOW! I'm only 18 I mean I really am not there yet.
*** Update it's the beginning of November and at the beginning of October I had 3 seizures in one day that's right 3, the worst attack of epilepsy I've ever had and I had to spend the night in the hospital with a cannula in my arm and have numerous blood tests yet there is still nothing that can cure anyone with epilepsy, only tablets can help you to lead a hopefully normal life, I had been getting better until that point and it definitely seems that my seizures are caused by a hormone imbalance which I'm trying to fix.
Anyway I hope this has been a little bit insightful into what I have been through and what Epilepsy is and that you understand my story:)
Love, Grace x
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