It doesn't control my life. It just makes things interesting from time to time.

Dec 22, 2002

One morning when I was 13 years old, I overslept. When I woke up, I had to rush to make it to my first appointment of the day: a babysitting job. I grabbed my clothes and rushed into the bathroom, and started brushing my hair. Then I couldn’t bring my arm down. I stared into my own eyes as my arm moved backwards and my back started to arch; and I lost my balance and fell…into the bathtub. The next thing I knew, I was on a stretcher being carried out to an ambulance parked by the curb in front of our house.

I was given a CAT scan and an EEG, and they found no abnormalities in my brain. I didn’t have any drugs or alcohol in my system (I never was interested in trying any of either; still amn’t), so there wasn’t any external factors that could have triggered the seizure. Over the next six months, I saw four neurologists, went through 2 more CAT scans and 3 more EEGs, had six more seizures, and was put on first salt tablets, then phenobarbitol, then (when that didn’t handle things) both phenobarbitol and dilantin. No cause has ever been found for the seizures’ sudden onset. I have my blood checked every two months to make sure the medication is at theraputic levels. After one attempt to wean me off of all meds which was halted when I had a seizure, I am now just on dilantin. It’s a big change from being on the full cocktail.

I went through high school like a normal teen, joining a couple of clubs (band, chess, and science…yes, I was a geek even then. Shut up.), getting my learner’s permit and driver’s license, having slumber parties and going to late movies, all the normal American-teen junk. (Okay, all the normal American-teen-who-is-an-incipient-geek junk.) The only difference was that I took phenobarbitol and dilantin every night. Tegritol wasn’t an option then: it hadn’t finished clinical trials, and my seizures weren’t severe enough to warrant making me into a guinea pig for Eli Lily and their ilk.

My doctors have theorised that it was a hormonal change brought on by puberty; but in that case, they should have stopped entirely by the time I was an adult. I just had another one the other day.

I hate living in fear. Is that dizziness because I’m hungry, or is it prelude to a seizure? Is that clumsiness my natural low-end grace, or an incipient muscular convulsion? Am I making more typos than normal because my mind is writing faster than I can key in my thoughts, or is this a warning sign? Will I be okay to drive my car today, or should I stay off the road — just in case?

Keywords: | health | epilepsy |
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