Testing…
testing… testing…
Rigorous
testing was done on me as doctors tried to find an explanation as to what could
be triggering the seizures. Unfortunately to no avail. I’ve stayed in client
studies for 24 hours as a strange helmet was placed on my head while these thin
small needles were placed right in-between my skull and the helmet, just to get
a test on my brain waves. They even encouraged me to bring my console gaming
setup, play games and watch TV or whatever… any kind of activated so they can
see what anomaly would appear on the brain wave readings. Sadly, it all came up
normal. “Just watch your son in the mean time” was the best suggestion given to
my mother.
My
first seizure was a big one.
Playing my computer game, I
collapsed onto the floor and lay unconscious until the next morning. I was
woken up by my mother who came into the computer room with a vacuum cleaner as
she ordered me to do chores. My head was hurting, and I felt extremely dizzy as
I realized my head was lying in a pool of my own vomit. I got very little to no
support from my mother about the disasters that occurred to me relating to my
seizures. For that matter, I had no one to talk about and ways to figure out
how to fight them. Doctors question my motives as to why they were triggered
and believed to be false, as my mother blamed the triggers on video games.
However, I know it was something specific triggering them, and I had to figure
it out on my own… with no one supporting me on the case. Doctor’s testing
always proved negative, and trying to “self” test it was a bit of a challenge.
I was told that, during a seizure I had a 60% chance of death. For some reason
that didn’t scare me as I was determined to figure out the cause of all this
and why they happened.
When do they occur? When do they
happen? Was it a coincidence that it happened while playing video games? Did
flashing lights cause my seizures?
At age 14, I finally got my
first job. My title; I was a fast food attendant for McDonlds. The managers
showed me the ropes as I was being taught what each of the equipment does and
how to go about cooking the food. While left alone, I was told to prep some
chick nuggets and placed them in the greaser. While reaching over for the bag
of frozen nuggets in the mini freezers above me, something hit me; a seizure.
My mother was proven wrong.
Something mentally is causing my seizures.
When given the opportunity, I
stayed up all night playing games, forcing myself to do “all nighters”. Not for
the sake of gaming, but to trigger my seizures. They got so bad, I started
having them once every two months, but every time they happened, it was easier
to feel them coming. I was able to detect my seizures before they could knock
me unconscious, but how to stop them completely remained a question.
My theory as to how they were
triggered had something to do with my vocabulary. When chatting to friends via
internet over the games, I would type at least 80+ WPM, but sometimes I would
stop and think of a word I forgot to spell during mid conversation (this also
effects me in real life conversations as well when trying to find the ‘right
word’). Because my brain would race so quickly to find this word, even if I didn’t know to spell it, I would suffer a
“mind blow” when thinking too hard about the word. The mind blow had the
following symptoms explained in my previous blog, basically the random “shakes”
I would get. I’ve tried changing my diet and it seem like regular chocolate did
have some effect on me. Doctors say that diets cannot change anything to help
prevent seizures, but who knows. If they can’t figure out what’s triggering it
now, then it’s anyone’s guess really. Even talking to other seizure patients,
they agree that some doctors don’t seem to understand what they’re talking
about half the time as most refused to believe that seizure patients cannot
“feel the seizures coming”. For the mean time, I was prescribed a medication to
help control the seizures with devastating side effects.
My seizures are easier to
control now, but all at a large cost. Due to the depression being created from
living under my mother, and finding it harder to find those who could support
for me for my disability, I had to move. If I didn’t, suicide was just a step
away. And what made these pills terrifying was that they didn’t allow me to
second think about suicide as the pills caused the depression to be even
stronger. I wasn’t happy here, that was obvious, and so I had to move as soon
as possible.
Several years past and I found
myself in a large city called Austin, TX. I’ve had grand adventurous thanks to
the friends in this city, and I eventually found a group to help support my
case with my epileptic situation. I found someone who was very educated in the
medical field training to be a doctor. He was a UT graduate and decided to use
me as an experiment to find a “cure” behind these seizures. Since I’ve moved to
Austin, depression was miles away from me as every day gave me a reason to
smile no matter how bad things got. Problem was… the suicide ideas still
appeared even on perfect days. Luckily, living in Austin gave me stronger will
power to fight off these dark temptations; it didn’t affect me in the long run.
While in Austin, I was able to
find myself a Neurologist to help find out what could be triggering all this.
He gave me helpful advice, but even he was confused as to what exactly could be
triggering these scenes as well. One of my recent trips, I discuss a new
problem that was up and occurring. It seems like the pills prescribed to me for
control my seizures were no longer ‘as effective’. My Neurologist didn’t like
the sound of this, and hesitated to give me the proper solution. He would’ve
offered me a new pill to help control the side effects from the current pill
I’m taking; being more effective. Plus I’d have to continue using my current pills.
However, that second set of pills would only have their own side effects, and
it would branch out causing me to demand several pills a day just to stay
functioning. I didn’t like the answer to this, and I asked if there was a
different solution. He didn’t answer.
Suddenly, I suggested “what
about marijuana?”
The only reason I even thought
about this was because of my UT Doctor buddy. When he was “testing” me to find
a cure, he notices that a small pill filled with THC gave me the best effect.
And boy, did it give me one hell of an effect. With my current seizure pills,
it’d have to take two a day just to live on. With the THC pill, I only had to
take two a week and I was perfectly fine.
My Neurologist gave a
displeasing sigh and stated, “Look. If you can find the stuff, then smoke it,
and disregard the other pills.”
To smoke it? Now this was going
to be a new experience. Luckily for me, I knew people who had some on them.
It was movie night with my
buddies, as a few of them invited me over to their place to watch a random
flick with them. Of course, my main interest in the gathering was to smoke, and
since we were such good friends I wasn’t turned down.
My buddy lighted his bong as he
took a hit and pass the large glass piece to me and the lighter. I was terrible
at this, but I took my first hit in such a wrong way. They found it funny, as I
started coughing like crazy unable to contain the smoke. Eventually, I took
about 3 hits until I started feeling “high”. This wasn’t the same experiences I
got when taking Dr. UT Friend’s pill.
While watching the movie, I
acted a bit different, but it seem for the better, as my speech was slower it
was easier for others to understand me when speaking to them (less mumbling,
which is still an on-going issue with me even today). However, once again I was hit by something…
since on the medication it’s been a good 5 years since I’ve had an episode.
While high, I dropped onto the ground and went another seizure. However,
something about this seizure was different… very, very different. As I shook on
the ground trembling all over the place, I was still conscious and was able to
speak (poorly, but still could talk). Having difficulty speaking, I gave my
friends instructions as to where to locate my back up pills (which I keep in my
car). During this time, I kept shaking and just tried to calm myself down. I
was in such a panic I didn’t know what to do in this situation. However I was
finding it odd I was fully awake and witnessing all this. Finally, my buddy
came back with the small pill bottle and handed it to me. As I reached in the
bottle to grab the pill, I thought to myself about something; a trick. I
pretend to swallow the pill by placing my hand over my mouth and swallowing
nothing. My body stopped shaking and I was almost back to normal. I got up, and
was able to walk around but felt a bit weak. It seemed like I suffered the side
effects of a normal seizure… but was I able to control it? I was still high, so
a lot of things at the time were undetermined on my condition. Maybe I’ll feel
better the next morning? I stayed at my buddies place for another two hours,
then drove back home.
Oddly enough, the next morning I
felt amazing! My head was so clear; it was something I was never able to grasp
on before. I was able to keep long conversations with my friends and was able
to have a strong attention to other things like reading a book. To me, this was
a break through, as I went 3 days not taking my pill. But alas, all good things
must come to in an end, and I became rather paranoid by day 3 of seizures
attacking me. I went back onto the medication, but there was more testing to be
done.
“What about marijuana?” well…
what about it?!
I gave it a second chance, but
this time I smoked it alone at my own place. I wasn’t addicted to the stuff… I don’t
know, I don’t feel like I get addicted to some things easily. Since the last
time I smoked at my friend’s place, it’s been a good 20 days and I’ve never
been tempted to try it again other than trying to test myself against these
seizures. A friend bought me a really nice pipe and showed me how to go about
smoking with it. With that, I decided to smoke home alone and see what the
results would corollary. Within’ 15 minutes I was high while watching a random
cartoon show I found on youtube. The show had me laughing at things I knew to
myself were not very funny, hell even while I was high I asked myself, “why the
hell was that so funny to me?” yet I couldn’t help but just laugh. Eventually,
once again something hit me hard. Damnitt! I thought I found an answer, I
thought this would help. Would I live my life under these seizures forever…
maybe there is nothing I could do… maybe I was helpless. Fuck it!! I thought
hard about all this, and as the seizure was about to hit me, I just said myself
“What’s the point of living if I’m going to be in constant fear of this
disability. If this is going me from doing the things I live, then let it kill
me.”
…
…
…
Confused. The seizure hit me
hard but, nothing happened. I was still in full control, everything was normal,
I didn’t collapse on the floor, I didn’t black out or anything. Once again, my
seizure was giving another hit to my brain, as I felt another shockwave ran
across my body and into my head. It seem like the seizures were not done and
decided to attack me again. I was hit again… and… still nothing. It kept
hitting me over, and over, and over, and over, yet nothing happened. I went
back to my show and just finished watching it.
I’ve never talked to anyone
about this, but till this day I’m still confused as to why that happened.
Lately, even when I haven’t been under the influences for over a month, I would
feel a seizure trying to hit, and I’ll just let it hit me and feel perfectly
fine. Can my seizures be caused by stress? Sudden emotion change?
(I’ll type in more in my next
blog about the after math. To be continued)
