Hey Jason,
You mentioned some interesting pros. Just want to let you know that seizures can harm the brain. Over time, frequent seizures can cause cellular damage and sclerosis (scar tissue). I know this from personal experience. Years of focal seizures caused cellular damage in both of my temporal lobes and mesial temporal sclerosis in my left temporal lobe (which was surgically removed).
Tristin :)
--- On Wed, 8/26/09, Jason <tiscione@gmail.
From: Jason <tiscione@gmail.
Subject: Re: [epilepsy] IS THERE ANYTHING GOOD IN HAVING EPILEPSY ?!?!?!
To: epilepsy@yahoogroup
Date: Wednesday, August 26, 2009, 5:04 PM
OK, let's give epilepsy credit where it deserves:
- Sick days! Waking up with that post-ictal feeling... hooray, my brain is
too screwed up for me to go to work today! I just send an email about a sick
day and then go back to sleep. Hell, maybe two sick days if the seizure was
powerful enough. (Not all grand mal seizures are created equal.) Meanwhile
everyone at work feels sorry for me. Unfortunately seizures that hit on
weekends are not useful in that way. And they [currently] strike at 4 AM and
4 PM. Seizures that hit at 4 PM at work- well by then, what's the point!
- Interesting stories to tell... peppered with attacks, hallucinations,
altered consciousness, blackouts, depression, nightmares, delusions, fugues,
auras, psychopathology, mind-altering drugs, etc. Unfortunately most people
can't relate and aren't too interested.
- Cryptogenicity. .. this doesn't apply to everyone, but my CAT, MRI, etc.
are all totally normal. And I'd actually rather not know that this is being
caused by e.g. a tumor or an aneurysm, like whatever just killed Sen. Ted
Kennedy. It seems most people have localized brain abnormalities that
obviously cause seizures, but people with temporal lobe epilepsy apparently
don't seem to have obvious foci. Maybe I'm wrong about that. My
psychopharmacologis t father-in-law says the temporal lobe causes a lot of
focal problems just because it's sort of sticking out like a wing from your
brain although it's tucked in under your skull. It doesn't receive a rich
arterial blood supply like the other lobes do.
- Deep insights into yourself, and how your mind works... how you integrate
memories, what sleep has to do with memory, the strange experiences of
unfamiliar emotions, the defects in tact, judgment, logic, and procedural
task performance that occur after seizures, etc. Having had seizures I'm
especially scared now that I might ever have a stroke.
- Do you like to sleep? After a seizure I can sleep for about 18 hours, wake
up for 5 dazed hours, and go back to sleep for another 18. I stay in bed
sleeping until the aches and pains from lying on memory foam for so long
finally force me to get up. I don't know why this excessive sleep fixes
things in my head, but it seems to.
- SSDI... unfortunately they deny your first application; they told me to
get a job.
- Epilepsy is not very inheritable; it typically involves a particular
combination of different versions of multiple genes that are each inherited
separately and randomly among other versions. (We decided we're too
curmudgeonly to have kids anyway.) But is it my imagination or is there
always some close relative with autism in the family? My sister has it.
- Medical marijuana certification. .. self-explanatory, and obviously this
also doesn't apply to everyone either; for starters you'd have to live in
CA, OR, and I forget what other states. But people with epilepsy are
included in that whole party.
- Epilepsy is often part of a syndrome that someone has, but you can have
epilepsy and nothing else. It struck me like a bolt of lightning that came
out of nowhere. You can't necessarily tell who has epilepsy just by looking
at them. So many people have it. You just don't know.
- Wouldn't you rather have something wrong with your brain than say... your
liver, or your heart, or your thyroid, or your kidneys? I'd be obsessing
about something like that all the time. At least with your brain you have
intimate awareness of your condition and get constant updates whenever
something goes wrong or doesn't work right- you don't need to wait for
jaundice to set in.
- Seizures don't harm the brain (or so I've been told) although one might
argue that your brain is already harmed if you're seizing.
- You can shame people on the Internet who always argue people in chronic
bad health (having preexisting conditions) don't deserve health coverage
because they chose not to diet / exercise / take care of themselves /
whatever. Just rattle off your life story so that they can see they've
implied you deserved your epilepsy. OK actually this is more infuriating
than beneficial. Anthem BC has me in their "Complex Care" program and they
just added my wife to it [for chronic migraine]. This means we've both been
stamped with "preexisting condition", and if I change jobs we're going to
run into trouble with health insurance. I'm watching these stupid town halls
and figuring, oh well, I guess we're going to keep our "preexisting
condition" status for some time.
- Jason
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:20 AM, shotwho24 <shotwho24@yahoo. com> wrote:
> i put the heading in all caps to get attention.i ask this because it seems
> to me that everyone seems to talk about terrible experiences they have with
> epilepsy.sorry if it sounds scary,but i thought that with everyone reading
> all the problems we experience with epilepsy.it is my theory that maybe
> some spirits can be lifted if some responses are made that indicate some
> happy experiences that they have while living with epilepsy.not just your
> own problems but i was thinking that reading some of the responses of others
> happy points could be uplifting to everyone.i'm thinking that since
> happiness is a stress reducer which can hinder some seizures,that this can
> be rather therapeudic for a great deal of us.so please do respond.
>
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