Seizure-tastic

Before I started having seizures, I thought my life post-stroke would remain relatively normal, i.e., I would have the vision loss, the memory issues, the numb left side, but nothing more.
And then the seizures came.
For a while, my neurologist wasn't sure that's what they were. I was on meds, then off, until my last fuzzy episode, on the 8th, when I had another seizure while caucusing in Iowa.
It wasn't "bad," they never are. I don't spazz out and fall down or bite my tongue, or do much of anything, really. But I get weird lights going off in the dead space of my visual field (on the left side) and I get sort of spacey and blank. They're called partial seizures, because only one part-- the part that was cut and bled and scarred after the brain surgery-- of my brain goes haywire.
There are more than 2 million people who suffer from epilepsy, which is classified as a condition once the individual has had three or more seizures. I've had 5 now, due to my stroke three years ago, but in 70 percent of the cases, the cause is unknown.
I wouldn't say that I'm too thrilled by the upheaval of this additional medical ills membership ranking, but I knew it was possible. When I left the hospital in 2005, my neurologist told me that if I was going to get them, they'd probably start up at around the 2-3 year mark. Right on time, they began before I moved to Chicago, although I blamed the weird feeling of my first one on dehydration caused by drinking too much.
Alcohol, stress, periods, low blood sugar, poor nutrition-- all of these things can cause seizure activity, and I've found over the past year and a half that stress seems to by my trigger, although the Epilepsy Assoc. says there really are no set triggers to this disorder. If neurons want to backfire, or just fire randomly, as it were, they will, it seems.

So now, with a new vial of oblong yellow pills gracing my counter, I'm ready to jump back into the world of the medicated and see how this drug works out.
My last medication was called Keppra, and it made me crazy. Side effects of epilepsy drugs include nausea and sleepiness, but for me suicidal emptiness was all I felt. No sadness, no fear, just plain emptiness. There was a two hour window of crazy productivity for me in the afternoon, but it wasn't worth the pain of being so barren. I got off the drug as soon as I could.
The neurologist who provided the recent second opinion on my condition said that I'm one of 30 percent who feel that way with that drug. Well, good to know. Now if only modern medicine could figure out a cure for this chronic, socially stigmatized condition.
I don't know if these things are going to get worse or not-- that's what the meds are supposed to control-- but I do know that like the rest of the medical hi jinx in cahoots with my body, this is just one more thing to deal with, damn the torpedoes.
I'm not sure what the new pills will do, but the Trileptin is lying in wait, yellow salvation or sadness, I 'spose. For those who do actually suffer at the impulse of this disease, I'm in awe and appreciation of. I'm lucky to be complaining as I am of the way this is shaking up my life, which is to say, not too much. It gives me something to be thankful of, I guess, keeps me from getting complacent or once again taking the crazy things we call life and health for granted.