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Husband in denial for past 10 years about his seizures

Sun, 04/24/2016 - 14:47
My husband started having Tonic-Clonic seizures approx 10 years ago. He has been in an almost constant state of denial about this. It has only been in the past 6 months or so that he has been willing to say the word "epilepsy." He has insisted I say he "has a condition." He has been unwilling to take his medication at all in the beginning, and now seems to struggle to understand that he has to take his meds at the same time every day. He has it in his mind that he has to take them in the morning and before bed, so even if he goes to bed at 3 am and wakes up at 7 am, he will take his meds at those times, instead of at a scheduled time. Even though I have told him many times this can be very dangerous. After a seizure he will often get very depressed, some times for months. In the days shortly after a seizure he will tell me his tongue hurts because he chewed it up so badly, but he will refuse to take anything for it and refuses to see a doctor to get relief. He sometimes will not eat or drink for days because of the pain, even though those things have been identified as triggers for him. He insists Oragel is the only thing he needs for his mouth pain. This frightens me. He seems not to care that it frightens me. He averages a seizure a year. He has had two recently, the first one right before Christmas, and he almost beat me up in his disoriented state. He was staggering around and got ahold of me and was swinging his arms wildly. I am a trained martial artist so I was able to dodge the blows. But it was scary. The most recent seizure he had three months later, right before we went on vacation to visit family. He was fine for a few days afterward, then got more distant and angry and was behaving strangely. He stared off into the distance constantly and wouldn't talk to any of our family and eventually became very rage filled. Mostly directed at me. One of the nights of our vacation I went to bed very concerned that he was going to kill someone in the night. I prayed if that happened that our child would not see it happen. He insists this is all about him, not about us as a family. He says I don't know what it is like to be him, which of course is true. He tells me he can control it and hates taking his meds because he hates taking anything, even aspirin. I tell him all the time I am constantly terrified of him driving home late at night from work, or I am afraid of him driving our kid around but he blows me off. I think he does have some "auras" or signals that these seizures may be coming, but he is in such a state of denial that he wants to pretend it isn't happening. It's very hard being married to him. Not because he has an illness. But because he refuses to come to terms with his illness. When he is seizure free he is a great guy. When he is struggling with his epilepsy, we are all controlled by his monster.

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