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Why Now?

Tue, 01/06/2015 - 13:10

Okay, I am so new to this. I have Fibromyalgia but have lately noticed a lot of things are worse, which has triggered a visit to a neurologist. My symptoms started last May when I got very sick with what I thought was a cold/flu. Never went to the doctor but it hung on for quite awhile. I noticed after that, that I would have trouble getting words out, that I would sometimes forget the names of things, what I was saying, what I was doing. To an extent, that is something I have dealt with (FibroFog), but it has never been worrisome, only a little annoying. It's getting so much worse though. Then when I was driving, I would look around and all of a sudden, nothing would look familiar to me and I had no idea where I was. These are roads and areas I have driven on almost every day since I started driving. I started getting these really weird tingly/vibrate-y feelings in my head. It was really starting to scare me. I was getting a lot of confusion, waking up far more sore then normal and my fatigue is through the roof. So I went to the Neuro.

MRI showed a few "changes to the brain" or something like that (even though I've never had an MRI of the brain before) but neuro didn't seem overly concerned. Then we did an EEG. Apparently, when I fell asleep during it, I had a seizure. They said something "spiked" and when they said that, I remembered that at some point in the "sleep", I got this weird feeling ...kinda like falling maybe? So he started me on Lamictal and I'm currently trying to get used to that (holy cow, not fun).

One of my questions is, why would this start now? I am 34 years old and seizures do not run in my family. I am under considerable stress. Could that trigger seizures to just appear out of nowhere when I've never had them before? Could it be loud noises? My in-laws have moved in with me and lived with me for about 1 1/2 years now and my stress levels are ridiculously high, as they don't work or bring in money or do anything but be a pain. Now my stepdaughter wants to move in but I feel like that will be too many people, too much noise, too much stress for me to deal with. Does anyone have any advice?

Also, how will I know if I had a seizure in my sleep? Now that I'm aware of it, I've been waking up thinking a few times that I may have had one, but I don't know.

Last question - Can these seizures in my sleep turn into scary daytime BIG seizures? Am I going to have to stop driving?

So many questions. So much stress.

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