Damn my temporal lobe and all who misfire in her

28 September 2007

The past few months I’ve had a little trouble with episodes of “feeling funny”. This horrid feeling was familiar to me as the precursor to the seizures I had back in 1999/2000 when a chronic cerebral abscess was giving me shit. That was subsequently removed and thrown across the room in disdain by my brilliant neurosurgeon, Chris Chandler, in spring 2000 and since October 2004 I’ve been medication-free too.

I was thus somewhat perturbed when this funny feeling returned with somewhat of a vengeance in July, accompanying the usual monthly excitement. I’ve had this unpleasantness wash over me very occasionally if I’m overtired, but this time around I was getting momentary numbness on my left side. Not good. My GP referred me straight back to Chris and I saw him today.

He asked me how I’d been. Great! Seizure-free for seven years! Brilliant! He was delighted and I even got an exclamation point in my notes – apparently you get one for every five years you’re fit-free. Then he read the list of symptoms I’d brought with me.

What I was describing were stereotypical temporal lobe seizures. I lost my exclamation mark. In a nutshell, I’m ok, but a tiny bit of scar-tissue left over from 2000 is causing the occasional short circuit. I’m being referred to an epilepsy expert and this might end up with me going back to a low dose of an anti-convulsant.

I don’t want a pill making my face chubby again. And I hate that I’ve just lost my claim to being 100% ok for the past seven years. There was still a twinge of pride when just last week I was able to tell my optician that I wasn’t taking any medications. Yes, this is only a small blip and maybe this specialist will sort it out for me. But for the time being it’s still crap. I just thought I was ok and had finished with this chapter once and for all seven years ago.