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Please help! How do I cope?
Tue, 06/24/2014 - 12:23I am a 30 year old female and 8 days ago I had my first tonic clonic(?) seizure. I will start with the characteristics of my seizure and then give some possible background. On a typical Sunday morning at 11:00 am I was sleeping in bed with my wife. She said she was awoken by my screaming "no". When she rolled over she said my eyes were rolled into the back of my head and I was convulsing and foaming at the mouth. She said that after 2 minutes of this she called 911 and she thinks it lasted for another 1-2 minutes after that. I vaguely remember waking up to the paramedics standing over me, telling me I had a seizure and when the stood me up I had peed everywhere. I was really out of it but I remember feeling mortified with embarrassment. I live on a third floor walk up and dont remember how I got from my bedroom to the ambulance or really how we got to the hospital. I am in the process of immigrating to Canada so I did not have health coverage yet and they seemed to not want to do much with me. They did a CT and said it didnt show any bleeding and pretty much sent me on my way. The doctor did not tell me anything except that my license was taken away and I have to follow up with a neurologist and MRI.
I do remember waking up three times that morning in a panic. I suffer from anxiety and used to have sever panic attacks but I have not been on any medication for over a year for anything. I also passed a kidney stone two days prior to this seizure. I was in excruciating pain for two days and then felt fine minus a little pinching during urination up until the seizure. I also started my period the day after my seizure. I have no family history of seizures at all.
Like I said it has been 8 days and every one of those days has been hell for me. I am barely eating and cannot even do any activities because I am so scared that I have this time bomb in my brain that could go off at any moment. I am having multiple mini panic attacks a day and they increase the closer it gets to bedtime. I am terrified to go to sleep because I dont know what I will wake up to. I dont go to see the neurologist until July 15th and am going to wait to schedule the MRI because it is 1200-1500 that I have to pay out of pocket.
Please please please someone help me! I really cannot handle this and need support or answers in any way!
First thing is try and stay
Submitted by just_joe on Wed, 2014-06-25 - 17:50
First thing is try and stay calmer. Stress is one of the main triggers ans sleep deprivation is another. mereloaded posts the rest of the things in her comment. As for tests the neurologists will want 2 one being an EEG which is basicallt a brain wave test. It is capturing the electrical output in oyur brain. The other is generally a MRI which is a sight of your brain from every angle which can be used to see anythnig wrong in it. Things like a growth deformity or scared brain tissue. If the EEg shows abnormalities then the area that the abnormality is comming from will be looked at closer. I had gone 15-20 different EEG's all were normal. I had a series of tests and the last one was another EEG in which I fell asleep in. That EEG was used to look closer at th neuro-angeogram (1960's version of todays MRI) after looking closer they found scared brain tissue which was caused by a hemmorage to the brain. A blow to the head caused the hemmorage. My current neurologist did another study wanting to see if there were other procedures that could be done .He came up with the same reasong but he also came up with the blow to my head was between 6-8. going to wait to schedule the MRI because it is 1200-1500 that I have to pay out of pocket. Understand that anybody at any age whether rich or poor can get epilepsy It doesn't always run in families either.