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New Diagnosis at 25, Scared!! Need Support and Info!
Tue, 01/13/2004 - 17:06I have been having ongoing sezuires for over two months, just got my insurance back, and have been hospitalized for 4 days while they tried to figure out what was going on. I have history of depression and was on xanax and valium for a number of years to control what they thought were horrible migraines & anxiety attacks, no tests were run at that time. I was blacking out back then. I went through a period where I was abusing speed and coke in my early 20s and supplementing it with my large RX of Benzos, so when I went for treatment I had withdrawal seizures. It has been 2 years sober and now I am having all of these strange hallucinations and twitches and go ito a trance like state. My face will hang like I had a stroke. All tests came out normal except the EEG showed some "Sharp stuff" and they said it has nothing to do with my substance abuse. I went recently for a 24 hr eeg. But know they are saying I am suffering post traumatic poststress disorfer and that I have bipolar.. I continue to have Complex Partial and Tonic Clonic.. I am on ever increasing dosages of Topamax, Dilantin, Klonopin, and Zoloft.. And I just want to scream!!! Is it possible that I am making this up and that I am going nuts?
Comments
RE: New Diagnosis at 25, but I am scared I am going Crazy!
Submitted by sabina78 on Fri, 2004-01-09 - 23:02
Update... yes I am being treated by a neurologist that specializes in epilepsy. The results of my 24 hour video eeg came back and I have a seizure disorder, complex partial seizures, so.. it is not all in my head, but she thinks that some may be triggered by post traumatic stress syndrome, so that I may be having I small mix of pseudoseizures as well, so it makes it difficult to treat. I have the seizures at home, or during my sleep, basically anywhere, anytime, random, but I can feel it coming like a flush or buzzy feeling.. and the weird thing is, during the 24 hour eeg, I don't remember having a seizure, I know that I had a major sleep disturbance where I felt like something stole my breath and I was fighting to wake up. but It showed sharp Stuff, not normal wavy lines. How do you just wake up with epilepsy? I thought you were born with it!
RE: New Diagnosis at 25, Scared!! Need Support and Info!
Submitted by USMALE on Mon, 2004-01-12 - 21:45
http://www.ilae-epilepsy.org/pubs/Epilepsy-Handout.pdfHave a good long loud healthy scream. Get it out of your system. You've got some work ahead of you. Live a normal life and don't let the idiots of the world tell you that you can't. I was diagnosed at the age of 14. It scared the crap out of me. Guess what? I'm 44 soon to be 45 and still living a normal life. You're only disabled if you allow this disability to take control. It can't run you unless you let it run rampant by not taking your meds, not getting enough sleep, not eating right, drinking, in short by not taking care of yourself. so please, Sabina, take care of yourself. You'll find that it's nowhere near as bad as it seems. Check out the webpage above. It should answer a lot of your questions. You need the Acrobat reader to view it, but they're still free to download if I'm not mistaken. If I am mistaken, (as if that could be possible), they're common on library computers.
RE: New Diagnosis at 25, but I am scared I am going Crazy!
Submitted by EpilepsyDotComEditor on Wed, 2004-01-07 - 13:28
I'm not a doctor, but it seems to me that if your EEG is abnormal, something physical is going on and you are not making it up! Are you being treated by doctors who are expert in epilepsy? If not, maybe you should ask for a referral. Take good care of yourself! Good luck.