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Medical students with epilepsy
Fri, 07/14/2006 - 14:40Topic: Men With Epilepsy
Are there any male medical students or male Doctors with Eplilepsy reading this? My son, now 20, was diagnosed with Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy with partial complex seizures last year after he joined medical school. (On hind sight he did seem to have a few "episodes" when he was in HS which went undiagnosed.)
He is on Trileptal 600 mg twice daily (dilantin has been stopped) - however he still smokes and stays awake 2-3 days at a stretch during exams. Not sure if he drinks - but he does not even wish to discuss any of this with us. An exasperated "Ma - just leave it" is the most articulate response I get from him each time he gets caught smoking. I would love any male insight into what could possibly be going through his head and how one should approach/discuss consequences of these behaviours with him. Or is "Leave it" the only option available to us?
Also his blood work shows an elevated Creatinine kinase for which several investigations have been done, but no answer. Don't know if it was elevated prior to diagnosis either. Does anyone know anything about this? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Re: Medical students with epilepsy
Submitted by Jonathan David on Wed, 2006-10-25 - 12:07
Hi, I am 25 years old, I have been Corporate America since I was 19 teen years old and been going to school. I have partial complex seizures, and I was reason diagnose with Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. I have been taken medicine since I was about 13 years old. I start off with Tegretol, and once god blesses the doctors to get me on the correct dosage to prevent me from having seizures. I was able to drive once I turned 17 years old and I was blessed to be seizure free until I turned 24 years old. I had peer pressure to smoke weed at early age, and since I knew I had seizures I was not move by the peer pressure to pursue smoking period. My doctor told me if I drink then I would have seizures and I only had one drink in my life and that was on my 21 first birthday. I was like your son; I would be working full time job, going to school, studing, at sometimes working a second job, and had a girlfriend, so I could understand why he is not getting much sleep, but not getting enough sleep can cause pre-seizures systems. He is going to have to understand his limits. Last year, I worked in a cooperate office and I had a seizure at work and it a great effect on my life. I was doing the same as your son; I was not getting my body enough sleep and a lot of time going off my second wind. I was taking tegretol at the time since and I then switch to a second drug which was tegretol XR and I still had a seizure, and I was switch to Lamictal and had a great side of effect of being by-polar, so then I started Keppra. I had a seizure on Lamictal and my doctor prove that sleep, stress, and missing medicine, and not taking my dosage on time was not causing my seizures. I was referred to a different specialist at Washington University in Saint Louis, and I under took some testing. I had to take a pet scan, MRI, and was put on EEG monitoring so they could find where my seizures was coming from. Every thing match to left temporal lobe and all the test match the same spot in which the seizures were coming from. The doctors think I an excellent candidate for surgery with a 60-80 percent chance of not having seizures. I am now at the stage of making a serious decision on what choice I should make regarding my seizures. I could have left temporal lobe surgery, try to find another medicine (which have a ten percent chance of controlling or preventing less seizures), or they could insert some thing like a pace maker kind of thing in my chest to send electros to the brain (which have a ten percent chance of controlling or preventing less seizures), or have a strict diet to follow to prevent or control the seizures. You to speak to your son about the cause and effect of some of his decisions he make, because it can lead to him having seizures. We have to respect our bodies and know how far we can push ourselves be for it is too late.