Tag Archives: TLE

Art, Brain, Health, Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Made It Through the Night…PLUS Temporal Lobe Epilepsy versus Schizophrenia

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This flower, whose name, Self-Heal or Heal-All, says everything, and it is not insignificant that this was the first wildflower that started me on my Field Botany path, and was also the agent of my natural history conversion experience:

Self-Heal or Heal-all (My first wild flower and the one that changed everything)
Self-Heal or Heal-all (My first wild flower and the one that changed everything)

 

Last night was a very difficult night, as you know.

I did not believe the nurse when she told me this morning that E–, who was an animal lover, would never have killed herself, leaving her beloved parrots to fend for themselves. She said it simply went against the grain of most animal people to kill themselves while their “children” still needed them. It turned out, though it took me a while to “grok” this, that E– apparently died of a combination of diabetes type 1 and asthma. The details are unclear and unnecessary but I was assured by both nurse and the building social worker that it was not suicide. Thank god.

However, early this morning things were not well, and I wonder if what  happened later on was not at work last night as well. Let me explain:

I had an appointment to see my psychiatrist, Dr Angela, at 10 a.m. and as usual I got up to drive myself there, a short distance over the bridge to the next town, maybe 6 miles away tops. It is a trip I have done dozens and dozens of times, perhaps hundreds now.

This time, however, things were different. Halfway there, on a stretch of road — I’m talking back roads not highway — a road that I know like the palm of my  hand, I was suddenly overcome by a feeling, an intense almost nauseating feeling of “jamais vu.” This is the opposite of “deja vu” — that sense that things you have never done have happened before. Jamais vu is the sense that while you are in familiar places or with familiar people, they seem strange or new or utterly unfamiliar. I have had deja vu many times, as have a lot of people, and I think it is a fairly common experience to feel as if something has “happened before” even though it is really a new experience.

 

But never before, at least not since I was ill, severely and neurologically ill, with Lyme disease, have I felt this intense feeling of non-familiarity in a situation that I know I knew very well. I was terrified, if briefly. I was not at all certain where I was. I mean, I kept driving, because my instincts told me to keep going, that my hands would make the proper turns. But my conscious brain had no recognition of where I was and no conscious notion that wherever I was I had ever been before. It was, as I said, terrifying and very, very strange.

Luckily, within minutes things had resolved enough so I knew that I had arrived at the Whole Foods parking lot, which my doctor’s office and the doctors’ complex shares. I still felt very weird. I felt in fact that I was not completely embodied, even though I carried a heavy enough bag to embody or burden down anyone.

When I got to Dr Angela’s office, the first thing i told her was that something was wrong. Yes, I had sent her the email I mentioned here yesterday, but I did not mean that. I meant the foreign feeling, the jamais vu intensity, which though faded still scared me. Thinking back, when i was so ill with Lyme it was actually deja vu, in an incredibly brilliant and vivid form, that afflicted me rather than the alienating jamais vu, but I knew that both deja and jamais vu can be commonly a symptom of either an aura or a seizure itself. Especially the much rarer experience of jamais vu.

I have had several different kinds of seizures in my life, and I have just been taken off Topamax, an anti epilepsy drug I have taken for years. I did this in preparation for a neuro-ophthalmology appointment in October (not sure why I thought it had to be stopped). So i have and had some sense that it was the d/c of this anti-convulsant that was the proximate cause if not the absolute cause for my symptoms.

But I was terrified that this jamais vu would generalize into a full-blown seizure, which I couldn’t bear the thought of. Dr Angela was quite responsive and suggested that I 1) take an immediate Ativan, .5mg as that is reasonably effective as an anticonvulsant, though better IV than oral and 2) when we found that I had stashed 100mg of Topamax in my pill compact, she had me take that as well, figuring I would get back to my usual 200-300mg within a week or two.

The appointment went — well, I don’t remember much about it, frankly. All I recall is leaving, promising to get a cup of coffee before I drove home, then realizing once I got to the parking lot that there was no way I could drive, coffee or not. I felt simply too weird. And weirded out. Too scared of having a full blown seizure, whether temporal lobe or otherwise to get in the car.

To my great luck, when I contacted my case manager, Rebecca, who works in next town over, she was immediately available and came to pick me up. That was a huge relief. I didn’t even have to wait more than 5 minutes. More, the Whole Foods grocery store people didn’t bat an eyelash when I asked if I could leave my car in the lot overnight.

Later on, Tim went and got my car for me, so I didn’t even have to do that. I simply went home and took a  nap. When I got up I felt at least ten times better. Not so weird, not so seizure-y. Less scared, and finally able to be convinced that the huge balloon of misery and terror from last night was just that, a balloon, a mistaken notion…a fiction. I was wrong, that was all. Even though the conviction and certainty felt as real as anything, they were only FEELINGS, and as so many people including my brother assured me, those feelings would change if I hung in there.

Lo and they did change and have changed. Thank heavens.

 

Now it occurs to me that perhaps even that huge balloon of certainty may have been seizure-related. I don’t have any real reason to think otherwise. I know, I know, my shrink brother has his theories. But I felt so UN-conflicted about it, so hugely convinced, that the explanation of seizure activity, comparable to the certainty that I “have never been here before” of jamais vu even though I knew I had, and also knew, as I said, that I had not caused the putative suicide…this explanation simply makes more sense and feels  “more right” to me. After all, why would I suddenly feel like I did anything to E— who was not all that important to me, or no more than anyone else in the building really. It felt morever just so hugely compelling, in precisely the same way that impending doom feeling of a temporal lobe seizure feels — it isn’t real but it is unshakable, utterly unshakable.

I don’t know, of course. The shrinks — and I include Dr Angela and my brother — would like to make it all about me, all about my conflicts and my mental illness however they want to define that. But I wonder now how much my ongoing (but unofficially diagnosed, that is, only by psychiatrists) TLE has affected me all along. I wrote about this conflict, this contamination of any schizophrenia diagnosis with temporal lobe epilepsy, and months ago. It seems strange that so many have “both”…|

Nevertheless, I have never had my seizure feelings checked out, largely because I do not want anyone curtailing my voluntary driving. And I don’t like doctors having that power over me. I also do not trust them to take me seriously, as a NON-psychiatric patient. I do take AEDs to prevent olfactory hallucinations, (NOT as mood stabilizers) and such, but why see a neurologist who might tell me I can’t drive a car for any length of time when I have never even had a fender bender from this? Or who might, and this would feel just as bad, tell me it is “all in my mind” not in my brain…!

Recovery, Schizophrenia, Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, Uncategorized

Washington, DC and Beyond

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Before I relate the tale of my trip to DC I hasten to add one addendum to the discussion below on TLE: Dr C said absolutely nothing about schizophrenia and TLE and possible misdiagnosis. Nothing whatsoever. ALL he mentioned was that my ECT apparently triggered — he used the word kindled — classic TLE in my brain, as evidenced by the pattern of onset of the olfactory hallucinations and their response to treatment. ALL the rest of my theorizing about schizophrenia and TLE has come from my own conjectures and readings that have spun off from that one statement and not from a single thing he said or implied. Please understand this. He may not have meant and may never bring up the subject at all…The question remains, Will I?

 

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Now then, about my solo flight, my DC adventure:

On Wednesday, Josephine drove me to New Haven and I took the high speed train, the Acela – going at a rather low rate of speed it seemed to me, most of the way – to Washington DC. The trip down was uneventful, except that in my anxiety to get a seat, I completely forgot to tip the porter who helped me get my bag down and up the  flights of stairs in the station (the escalator wasn’t working). I had a five dollar bill in my pocket all ready for him but at the last minute plum forgot…for which I felt guilty the entire journey right ip until I got back into Jo’s car at the end of it…and even now, a twinge remains.

 

The four and a half hours passed quickly as I had to review the new edits the copy editor had made. It wasn’t announced that we had arrived. People just stood and started getting their things from the overhead rack. I had to ask if we were in Washington. Finally, off the train, I followed where everyone else seemed to be going, managing not to go near the uniforms with the dog, though it occurred to me that maybe it was where I was supposed to go, because I wasn’t going where the cars were, was i? Luckily just then, Sara waved to me from the opposite door , and I saw and recognized her so that misstep was averted…It occurred to me, however, that we have become like a police state, what with armed guards and police dogs standing around in train stations, only supposedly to protect us (after all, they tell you DO NOT TOUCH THE DOG!)

 

That first night we spent just getting caught up on Sara’s recent travels as she is head of an “abroad program” at a university there. Then the next day, I slept till 9 and she went off to work. At noon I was picked up by a friend of Sara’s who drove me, with a few mishaps, to the train again, for my trip to MD to talk to a senior psychology class at a small, private college in a town about an hour outside of Baltimore. During the drive to the school, I began to feel weird — thought it was low blood sugar or simple sleepiness– and asked if we could get some coffee once we got there. I felt too fuzzy to even pay for anything, couldn’t think straight to talk, just eating to prevent myself from fainting. Finally, it was time to go to the class, and so I pulled myself together, took a last bite from my muffin and threw the rest of coffee and muffin away. 

 

In the class I gave my talk and did the Q and A with nothing untoward happening, except that I had to stop when the feelings reoccurred with fatigue near the end, at around 4:15 (the class ended at 4:30 so I made it almost the whole time). All the questions were really good, made me think. The only one I felt I did not do justice to was the one about Lynnie and whether or not she needed therapy and medication (!). If only they knew her and Sal…But in any event, I ought to have explained how psychiatrists are ordinary human beings with ordinary human emotions and flaws and faults, not superhumans, and they get angry and jealous and pissed off etc just as anyone else does. Jealousy in and of itself is not an illness, just an uncomfortable feeling that I know Lynnie has dealt with in her own professional and personal therapy over the years (as I pointed out all psychiatrists see their own therapists first). As for medication, she’d be the first to tell anyone she swears by it, and would not want to do without it!

 

After that class, I was blitzed completely, and could barely sit up straight in the car heading back to Baltimore and the train, and then my head blossomed into a migraine on the train. When I met Sara in the station again in DC I was utterly exhausted. I ate a little supper but basically fell asleep by 9pm and slept through until 9am.

 

Friday we took it easy. We drove around the Capitol area and stopped to walk into the Supreme Court, and walk around the White House. But we didn’t spend a great deal of time anywhere as the light was a brilliant blinding white and the temperature pushing 75°F.  Also, that night I had a poetry reading scheduled at the Potter’s House Sounds of Hope gathering

 

The Potter’s House in DC — a bookstore and home-cooked-food restaurant, with a Let’s All Help Each Other theme…It was great to go in the door and find a seat at the table and know every, or nearly every song sung. I wasn’t scheduled until the last  of the night, and was afraid everyone would leave before then…and they almost did until the MC asked some to stay for “dessert” ie me. So I finally had my reading and I think they liked my stuff…Hope they did, I didn’t hold back or read only easy things at any rate…

 

THe rest of the visit went supremely well, as Sara and I get along great. We ate in an Ethiopian restaurant one night, and at a Spanish open air market for lunch the next day. Only bad aspect of the visit, and it could not be helped, was that I brought a cold with me all unawares, so I was almost, but not quite, miserable the whole time. In point of fact, I was miserable only ONE night of the four, and miserable not a single day there, thanks to Sara’s good company and hospitality, plenty of kleenex and good food, with no pressure at all to do anything (once the class was over with — which was MY pressure entirely).

 

All in all, a great trip. Some paranoia developed on trainride home, with feelings/suspicions/knowledge that the people who sat down next to me in the Acela were accusing me of having stolen one of their tickets…to the point that I started talking to myself and had to get all my things and move seats to somewhere I felt more comfortable. Nowhere really felt comfortable after that, though, since everyone was looking at my book and what I was reading, so I had to switch to a harmless magazine. Finally the guy sitting in the single “disabled” seat at the back of the car got off at Grand Central so I quickly snagged that, having a disabled-discounted ticket myself. Things ought to have calmed then, only then I thought people were looking at me and wondering, Why is she sitting there, she doesn’t look very disabled to me!  I was very glad to detrain at New Haven I will tell you that. But how was I to get my heavy “carry on” wheeled bag down the high stairs at the station? No way was I able to lug it myself, especially not carrying two other bags, and one being my purse/tote bag I could not see leaving it alone while I took the bag by itself.

 

Just then a burly older man, lifting his own carry-on in one hand, stopped and said, Let me get that for you. “Oh, would you? Thank you so very much!” I replied. Without a word, he took my bag by the vertical handle and carried it swiftly down the thirty of more steps to the bottom then walked away before I could thank him again. Oh, what a lovely gesture. I was more relieved than I could say, though it was easy enough for him, and I daresay he is used to doing it. I was very glad to have been today’s recipient of his gallantry! The rest of the way was easy, as I could draw the bag on its wheels and take the escalator the rest of the way. I swear I don’t know how they get away with making these trains to inaccessible to the handicapped. They are practically inaccessible to any but the very young and strong, so far as that goes…And nearly every station had that long staircase leading to the platform, except for, say, DC, which is flat from parking lot to train, and even minus a step getting onto the train  itself.

 

Welp, that was my much anticipated, much worried about adventure and I’d say it went just swimmingly, despite cold and despite migraine and intense fatigue at the middle to the end of every day. One thing I did learn that was helpful was that eating three meals a day was good for me, rather than letting myself forget to eat until late in the evening and then cramming down the calories. Today I even tried to follow the pattern I did with Sara, and started the day with a healthy brakfast of fruit, cereal and yogurt. Then I did what the visiting nurse has suggested for many many months: I set a timer to remind me of lunchtime: I had an onion roll and dried fruit at one o’clock. At 6:00pm or so I plan to have…well, some mix of green beans and onio ns, cheese and soymilk plus strawberries and black berries with yogurt for dessert. Mainly because that is all I have at the moment. Or I will have Irish oatmeal made with soymilk, plus dessert, which would be a lot easier! I hope I can keep this regimen up, as it cannot but help my stamina, if it does nothing else.

Brain, Schizophrenia, Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, Uncategorized

Schizophrenia and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (cont.)

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In my further reading on TLE I have learned that while “TLE hallucinations” can be ecstatic visions or the sight of threatening people or actually hearing voices, usually they are of brightly colored lights or visual distortions, like objects appearing larger or smaller than usual, hearing music, feeling insects running under one’s skin etc. In addition, there is the awareness that these are hallucinations, though not always. A personality seems to be associated with TLE, some people think, though it is not clear to me how established this is as fact. And some with TLE and without it claim that creativity is directly related to it. Hypergraphia, the compulsion to write, write, write is definitely associated with TLE, along with a compulsion to draw or do art or think/talk about religious subjects. Heightened emotional state but reduced sex drive. Something called “stickiness” is described, which I construe as a kind of tendency to glom onto a person or to exhibit an extreme loyalty. Also, there is seen irritability and gross personality change, rages, a tendency to fly off the handle or perform outrageous acts like stripping in public etc. 

 

In TLE you can have feelings of euphoria and floating as much as feelings of impending doom. A feeling of “rising into something” or of something rising through one’s body is a common concomitant of a TLE seizure or aura. An indescribable feeling according to many.  And you can have psychosis, chronic or acute.

interestingly, while EEG is notoriously poor at picking up TLE, there are often  punctate  signal hyperintensities (precisely the abnormalities I have had at least since Y2K) seen on MRI in those with TLE in the book I am reading — SEIZED, by Eva LaPlante.

Now I do not want to jump the gun, because too many of my symptoms have been chronic and disparate, not following a single pattern of seizure, whereas at least one authority claims that once you have one seizure, all others look similar. Indeed, while you might say that Grey Crinkled Paper arose from a seizure, and the jacksonian seizure with Novocaine were definite, and too the feelings of impending doom were also seizure activity  while I was taking Clozaril and other antipsychotic medications, the others, with different patterns yet, could not have been,since they were more varied even than those. The olfactory hallucinations had to have been seizure  associated too, but then where does it all stop, and where does the notion that one seizure sets the pattern for all others go?

 

And yet even conservatively I myself would count all those instances as seizures even if I were not going to count anything else as seizure-related right now…So  what to make of them, and the fact that ALL were so distinct and different from one another:?

 

Does it make the whole thing, the whole illness over all TLE or schizophrenia? Can you in fact have both, or does having TLE  suggest that the schizophrenia was a misdiagnosis all along?  And how does one know? Certainly, I have one trait that points towards the TLE diagnosis: I do well inbetween “attacks” of either illness, and seem to have not suffered any deterioration in brain function cognitively. Not massively. Though my memory and such is faulty, that is often the case in TLE itself!

I don’t have the slightest idea, but I suppose I will find out as the weeks go on and I continue to discuss it with Dr C, as I anticipate I will. I do plan to  see him once Dr O leaves… I liked him enough to do so at any rate, and I liked this idea enough too, to want to pursue it too. I    t will be very interesting to find out what happens, where it leads…If it redefines me entirely, I wonder how I will feel or deal with it?

 

 

 

Brain, Schizophrenia, Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Schizophrenia and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

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I want to begin by quoting two websites on the symptoms of each. First the Mayo Clinic on the symptoms of schizophrenia and then Richard Restak’s excellent article on TLE.

 

Schizophrenia Symptoms

By Mayo Clinic staff

In general, schizophrenia symptoms include:

* Beliefs not based on reality (delusions), such as the belief that there’s a conspiracy against you

* Seeing or hearing things that don’t exist (hallucinations), especially voices

* Incoherent speech

* Neglect of personal hygiene

* Lack of emotions

* Emotions inappropriate to the situation

* Angry outbursts

* Catatonic behavior

* A persistent feeling of being watched

* Trouble functioning at school and work

* Social isolation

* Clumsy, uncoordinated movements

In addition to the general schizophrenia symptoms, symptoms are often categorized in three ways to help with diagnosis and treatment:

Negative signs and symptoms

Negative signs and symptoms represent a loss or decrease in emotions or behavioral abilities. They may include:

* Loss of interest in everyday activities

* Appearing to lack emotion

* Reduced ability to plan or carry out activities

* Neglecting hygiene

* Social withdrawal

* Loss of motivation

Positive signs and symptoms

Positive signs and symptoms are unusual thoughts and perceptions that often involve a loss of contact with reality. These symptoms may come and go. They may include:

* Hallucinations, or sensing things that aren’t real. In schizophrenia, hearing voices is a common hallucination. These voices may seem to give you instructions on how to act, and they sometimes may include harming others.

* Delusions, or beliefs that have no basis in reality. For example, you may believe that the television is directing your behavior or that outside forces are controlling your thoughts.

* Thought disorders, or difficulty speaking and organizing thoughts, such as stopping in midsentence or jumbling together meaningless words, sometimes known as “word salad.”

* Movement disorders, such as repeating movements, clumsiness or involuntary movements.

s

Cognitive symptoms involve problems with memory and attention. These symptoms may be the most disabling in schizophrenia because they interfere with the ability to perform routine daily tasks. They include:

* Problems making sense of information

* Difficulty paying attention

* Memory problems

Complex Partial Seizures Present Diagnostic Challenge

Quotes from Richard Restak’s article in Psychiatric Times (Sept 1,1995)

Since the condition [Temporal Lobe Epilepsy] may involve gross disorders of thought and emotion, patients… frequently come to the attention of psychiatrists. But since symptoms may occur in the absence of generalized grand mal seizures, physicians may often fail to recognize the epileptic origin of the disorder.

In most instances, the emotion experienced as part of the seizure is a disturbing one variously described as dread or a feeling of impending doom; in others, the emotion may be experienced as pleasant or euphoric…Descriptions such as “a wave,” “something flowing upward” are often employed.

Controversy continues as to the validity of a so-called temporal lobe personality… Outbursts of irritability, rather than frank violence, are hallmarks of TLE.

[R]are presentations include anorexia nervosa (Signer and Benson 1990), multiple personality (Schenk and Bear.

Most common is a global hyposexuality (deficit of desire and feeling]…

TLE also may be responsible for chronic rather than just acute psychoses. While any of the symptoms of schizophrenia may be encountered, paranoid traits are the most common. TLE patients can be distinguished from schizophrenic patients by the maintenance, when not acutely ill, of warm affect and good rapport…

The treatment of TLE is complicated by the fact that many times improved seizure control via anticonvulsants leads to deterioration of the neuropsychiatric status. Schizophrenia-like epileptic psychoses often emerge when anticonvulsants are normalizing or improving the seizure activity…

While the illness is an epileptic one and treated by neurologists, many neurologists remain unfamiliar with and even uninterested in its neuropsychiatric components. But by ignoring the experiential symptoms, the neurologist deprives the patient of the opportunity to coherently integrate all aspects of the epilepsy. It may also cement the patient’s misconception that in addition to the epilepsy, he or she suffers from a “mental illness.”

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I was going to go into a deeper discussion of this, but cannot at this hour (11:15pm as I must go to bed now. But I plan if I can to do so tomorrow. And if not then, well, then ASAP. Meanwhile, I would have told my schizophrenia.com readers to think back on all that I’d written over the years, and tell ME what is going on…but you cannot do that, not knowing me as well as all that. Needless to say, however, I do think there is reason to suspect that the second diagnosis might have some possible validity, though it is hard to see how all of my symptoms can have been only TLE…But wow, would I be relieved to have a name for it if they were!

TTFN

There is an interesting discussion about schizophrenia and TLE etc here: Schizophrenia and spiritual experiences: Is there a link? http://livewithwonder.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/schizophrenia-and-spiritual-experiences-is-there-a-link/

Mental Health, Psychiatry

New Psychiatrist

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Well, I said I would get back here and tell you about my first session with the new psychiatrist, but life got away with me and I haven’t had a chance to until now.

The first thing I noticed, walking into the waiting room, which was both good and a little off-putting, was that the radio was playing WNPR, national public radio. Now the good part of this is that it was indeed NPR, the news and liberal-leaning talk radio that I myself listen to. This boded well, I thought. But the fact that it was talk radio at all, rather than soft music I found by itself rather strange. I mean, what if someone didn’t like or agree with those points of view? It seemed a rather unfair thing to be throwing politics and other controversial subjects into the air right before someone was to see a psychiatrist. Now, right here I am tempted to play shrink to the shrink, and analyze why he might have done this, but in point of fact I have no idea and should not presume to know or even guess. After all I only met the man once.

So I noted this, and felt, well, those two ways about it, then filled out the forms waiting for me, and sat back to wait. It wasn’t long. He was only about 5 minutes late, if that. Then he ushered me into his office, which I noted at once was set out in a big square of large immovable chairs and a sofa. He told me to sit wherever I wanted. Uh, oh, I thought. How can I choose a chair? I had no idea, so I sat immediately in the one touching my leg, which happened to be the one farthest from his desk. He sat down in the chair directly opposite me, about ten feet away, or so it seemed. Maybe it was six feet? Hard to say now, but it felt very far away. I think I will try a different chair every time, maybe until I find one that feels right, or a different one according to my mood, I dunno. All I know is that that one felt wrong for me that day…

I didn’t notice much more about the office after that, not even the colors. I didn’t look around, not with my eyes. I mean, I did seem to look around, in that my head may have turned a couple of times, swinging from side to side, but my eyes didn’t actually take in anything. I was just “gazing into the distance” because I find it hard to make eye contact.

I was going to say, He asked a lot of the usual questions, but did he? Honestly I cannot say now what he did ask. Except that he started out by saying, What brings you here? Pretty standard question, but for the fact that I knew Dr O had spoken with him and that I thought he knew why I was there…So I just said, I needed to find someone to “take her place.” I didn’t mean in any sense but the literal: I needed another psychiatrist. No one could take her place in any other sense. At one point he mentioned that he knew about my book, or perhaps said that he did in response to my asking him if he knew about it. I asked him not to read it, yet, and he agreed, though now I am not sure why. Why not have him read it? It would get a lot of things out of the way. And maybe he would not have read it anyway, was just curious as to why I did not want him to read it myself.

At some point, I cannot recall how, we got onto the subject of my olfactory hallucinations, either gone now or controlled well by lamictal (it is hard to say, as I still reguarly get “whiffs” of burning smells that are unexplained). When I explained the genesis of these hallucinations — a week after ending ECT, starting first as soapy smells and then progressing to burning rubber, to the point where I could not eat anything but tomoatoes and apples, and under what conditions they abated, ie with my taking tegretol (I believe), he said it was absolutely classic for temporal lobe epilepsy.

But, I said, I’d had an EEG at the time, and they said they’d found no signs of seizure activity.

TLE is often missed on regular EEG, he said. Then he told me the kind that usually picks it up, but I failed to follow him…it got too complicated and I was still stuck on the TLE thing. No one had actually said to me Temporal Lobe Epilepsy before. Oh, people had said “seizure activity” many times, in many different circumstances. Like when I took Clozaril and Seroquel. Always, my side effects were Dx’d as “seizure activity” — and then ignored. Ignored! The doctors would simply have me continue to take the drug and ignore what they themselves called “seizure activity”. Is it any wonder that nightly episodes of terrible feelings of impending doom, and what I described every week I saw my therapist as the feeling of my brain building to a terrible electrical threshold that only sleep staved off — or did it? I wonder… Is it any wonder that I wanted to quit both drugs and did so as soon as I could?

But more than that, I’d had a seizure when my wisdom teeth were taken out. I was about 23 and I lways thought it was because of too much novocaine, though that was only my impression. Anyhow, in the middle of the procedure, one arm and one leg started moving up and down mechanically while I sat in the dentist’s chair. I remember the dentist saying, “She’s seizing” then “__ mg of Seconal,” and that is all I recall until they resumed the procedure, which I believe they did do, unless they were all finished…I cannot remember now. In any event, I did go to a recovery room to sleep afterwards, but I do not remember my parents, with whom I was still living, being told anything, or reacting in any way when I told them. Which I find strange to this day, seing as my father is a doctor and I had just graduated from college and was home to study pre-med courses myself.

Anyhow, I have been reading up on this and have even read a little about some mental illness being related to TLE, esp bipolar and even schizophrenia. Went looking for material on the internet, but have not found a great deal on these subjects, at least not that is available to me. It may be that there are specialized journals that would deal with them at greater depth etc but usually the cost of a subscription is prohibitive, as are most texts (over $100). The public library is useless in this regard as well, having so far as I could see, almost nothing on the subject except a few books written for parents and/or children. Finally, I found a couple on Amazon, and sent for used copies. We’ll see if I get any answers.

But I was talking about the new psychiatrist, Dr C. He is tall, his hair seems gray but could be white blonde, and I cannot for the life of me tell how old he is. Not too young at any rate, I do not think. He seems okay, will probably grow on me, so to speak. I had no immediate reason not to like him and I did like his telling me about his opinion of TLE so openly, even if we really have no proof in terms of an EEG.

I will see him again at the end of April, and then we will see. It will be the first time I have seen a male psychiatrist in a very long while, and I don’t know how that will be. but what the hey, I’m willing to try.