A-Typical male's journal.

Forgive me if I'm a bit off, I really want to write this, but I'm writing through a headache.

I've written before about this. How I have to periodically check in with the state Division Of Motor Vehicles, and certify my seizure-free status. How not doing that results in my license being temporarily revoked. Like it is now.

There's an out though. If you doctor can certify that he believes you will never have another siezure, and the DMV agrees, then it's over. I've been siezure free and off medicine for over two years now. If I was going to have another siezure, it would have happened. Now all we have to do is convince the state. And it's over.

I can't begin to write about the ways that my siezures, my epilepsy,have shaped me. Why this is so amazing to me. Not just amazing as we use it today (ie, "Wonderful" or "extremely good") but as it's traditional definition: stupefying.

I've had epilepsy since I was fourteen. I'm 29 now, that's more than half of my life.

I remember, sitting sideways (as kids do) in a chair, watching Disney. I think it was playing "The Cat from Outer Space" or "Herbie: The Love Bug". I don't remember which, but it was one of those two. Then I remember a strange man, looking down on my, shinging a bright light in my face. He asked me what year it was, and I told him 1979. It was 1982.

I remember them putting me on the stretcher, talking to Mom and Dad about what they had done. "I remembered what to do from my class at work" Dad said. "But I couldn't stop him long enought to put a piece of wood between his teeth." The EMT replied, "Don't do that, it's just a good way to get your fingers bitten off."

Then from Mom, "What should we do?" Dad said, "Just get everything out of his way, move all the furniture back." The EMT didn't say anything, but I imagined him nodding.

They wheeled me into the ambulance, and I started looking at the dates on the bottles. I thought they might be expiration dates, because they were all after 1979. They gave me oxygen, and I started trying to name the presidents in my mind. Once I realized that Carter wasn't president anymore, I realized the dates. Excited, I told the EMT. He smiled kindly at me, and told me I was right. He turned to his companion, and told him something that meant I was coming out of it.

They settled me down in a bed in the hospital, the first of many IV's in my arm. My parents stayed long enough to know I was fine, and I drifted to sleep.

The next day, I was tested several times over. I was grateful for the wheelchair, because I was so stiff. In a seizure, you arms and legs, mouth, many of your voluntary muscles, constrict with full force. Epileptics can easily break their arms, or the furniture around them, or hurt someone who is trying misguidedly to help. I certainly strained several muscles, and was always stiff after a seizure. Sometimes that was the only way I knew I'd had one.

They ran a CAT scan, and an EEG. The CAT Scan was kind of cool and science-fictiony, but the people who administered the test weren't very friendly. They wouldn't let me see the pictures of my brain. I eventually got a look at them, but only the black and white printouts, not the full-color displays the technicians had.

I didn't have any real brain damage, so they sent me to the EEG. They let it run, let me relax, and had me move, or do minor things. They put a flashing light in my eyes, since some Epileptics have siezured caused by this (There is a character in "The Andromeda Strain" who has this problem). The EEG technician was friendly and nice.

When they were done with this test, the neurologist came up to me and said. "You have epilepsy." Now, I didn't know what epilepsy was, but somehow, when it was named, I thought it was awful. I muttered, "OH, noooo", and started crying. I don't know why...I thought it was awful.

I had had what they called then a grand mal seizure, which they call 'tonic-clonic' today. I don't know why the terminology change. We later discovered that I had petite mal siezures as well. The scariest seizures were the ones where I'd lose control of my legs, and just fall. They were scary because I knew they were happening.

See, during both the grand mal and petite mal seizures, I was unconscious. I was never 'around' when they happened. I only knew by inference that something had occurred. Like seeing the concern in my mother's face after a petite mal, or feeling the ache in my upper legs and arms after a grand mal. For awhile, I would daydream that the seizures weren't even real. This was really easy to do once they got the medicines right.

Dad wrecked the Pinto we had sometime during this time. I used to take care of that car, washing it, learning about it's engine, daydreaming about riding it. But after the seizure, I knew I wouldn't be allowed to drive, and I gave up on it. When Dad wrecked it, I didn't start taking care of his new car. I don't think I even washed the cars again. Perhaps my parents understood.

I was on phenobarbital for most of my high school years..at lest the first two or three. Phenobarb mostly controlled the seizures, but wrapped me in an unfeeling blanket. I was neither depressed, nor happy. Extreme emotions were just impossible for me. On top of it all, since I was changing so much anyway, I didn't realize I had changed.

They changed me to tegretol, a drug which both worked 100% effectively, and had no harmful side effects (for me). I remembered what happy was. I saw the world in color again. But, I still had my problems.

Ask anyone who takes medicine every day. It's an almost impossible task. You take your meds, and suddenly you qualify as normal again, stop, and your problem comes back. It would seem an easy, logical choice. Take the meds. Just do it.

But I could get away with it, sometimes. I'd go for a week without medicine, and take one dose, and nothing would happen. One time I missed one dose (or was late on it) and I had a seizure. I never knew. My lack of discipline meant I didn't get my license until I was 20 years old. That was a glorious summer. I could finally drive, I had a real girlfriend for the first time, and I could go visit her. I did, once, and got in trouble. But not too much. Just for lying about where I was going.

It was nice to have that particular problem. My parents moved to Wilmington that year--Dad's work moved him, and I moved on campus. I made an agreement with the Drug Store from my home town to mail me my medicine. In October, they filled it with the wrong prescription. I assumed it was a generic--it was about time they came out with a generic tegretol. No, it was lopressor, a similar looking medicine-- but one designed to lower blood pressure.

I passed out in the doorway of my dorm room. My roommate found me, and called the Campus Health Service. I woke up there. It was Halloween week. Mom and Dad hadn't moved yet, so they drove to campus, bringing three things. Sugar cookies, their support, and a letter from the DMV. Cancelling my license. I'd had a break-through seizure ( a seizure when I actually took my medicine) back in May, and it had caught up with me.

This was the point in my life when I started rebelling against the medicine. It took me five years to get my license again, and then only because of that girlfriend I'd driven to see. I hated her for it; She'd hated me because I never made her take hers. We used to argue about it all the time. Even after I got my license, I had a couple of seizures. I was saved from losing my license by timing, more than anything.

In July of 1995, I deliberately weaned myself off the medicine. I had read that tegretol would induce a seizure if you abruptly stopped taking it (ie, by forgetting). I knew that there was a good chance I had outgrown my seizures long before, and that all the siezures I'd had recently were tegretol-induced. So I weaned myself off.

It worked.

It shouldn't have. I didn't deserve it to work, but it did. I didn't tell anyone, but Mom and Dad suspected. When they found out they were furious. Understandably. See I was still driving--an extremely irresponsible thing to do. Somehow, I'd managed to win out, and get what I wanted, by sheer dumb luck. If I was religious, I'd say that it was God's way of balancing the payment for me having epilepsy in the first place. By the time I had weaned myself off the meds, I wasn't religious, though.

Dad believes that I had epilepsy for a reason. He believes that God gives us these challenges, along with the tools to deal with them for a reason. I don't know what that reason was. If I had somehow done something great because of my epilepsy, I might buy into that. But I didn't; it just went away.

My epilepsy is one of the main reasons I questioned my faith. For awhile, it was a bolster to my faith. For awhile, my faith helped me with the epilepsy. Today, I don't know, since I don't seem to have either epilepsy, or faith.

Generic Joe's A Typical Male