An Unexpected Complication

If you are like most people who have never had any serious health problems in the past, you probably don't really consider the possibility of waking up one morning and finding yourself lying in a stretcher, inside of an ambulance with sirens blazing, rushing to the nearest hospital at top speed. Neither did I.

But at 10:35 a.m. on Sunday morning, March 7th, 2010 I had that very thing happen to me. I woke up, lying on my back, looking up at an EMT. He explained to me that I had had a seizure, and that they were taking me to the hospital. He said that I seemed to be ok, and would probably be fine.

Many thoughts were running through my head. At first I thought that he was joking with me. A seizure!? I mean, come on. I've never had a seizure before, that doesn't make sense. But I quickly realized that he was serious. Next I thought that it might be a dream. But I thought about it, and it was "too real" to be a dream. So, I just lay there, confused, not really sure what to think.

When we got to the hospital they wheeled me out of the ambulance, through the extirior doors, through several hallways, through some other doors, and finally into my room.  Then they transferred me to my hospital bed. By this time I had regained some of my strength, so I was able to help them out while they were moving me over to the other bed. Then the nurse came in and checked my vitals and some other things. Everything seemed to be normal.

After some time the doctor came in and explained that it's not uncommon for an adult to have one seizure in the course of his life, so they weren't going to prescribe any medicine this time. They let me go about 2 p.m. My brother, Jeremiah, was there with me, at the hospital as well as my dorm counselor so my dorm counselor drove us back to campus. I went back to bed and slept for a couple hours. Seizures are quite exhausting after all. After my nap I started on my homework for my classes on Monday. School doesn't slow down for anything, not even seizures.  =)

I had some doctor's appointments to get an MRI and an EEG, and some other stuff to try to find out what was causing my seizures. The MRI and EEG both didn't show anything, which I suppose is a good thing, it meant that I didn't have any tumors or unusual brain activity. 

I went along fine until April 11th when I had my second seizure. I woke up as they were transferring me from my bed to the stretcher, then I don't remember anything else until we arrived at the hospital. I think that I actually got the same room as the time before, room 9. They did the same things that they did last time, only this time they prescribed me some medicine, 1000mg of Keppra daily.

Everything seemed to be going pretty well after that for a while. My memory verses were taking a whole lot more effort to memorize, but I didn't really think about it at the time, I just figured that they were harder verses. I would also sometimes not remember things that I said, or did. People would tell me an inside joke that I was supposed to get, but I couldn't remember it. Once they explained it to me, I would remember though.

My grades in all of my classes took a noticeable dive. For example, Biblical Church Leadership, I was getting a 98% in the class up until I was put on medication. The class is basically rouge memory work. If you can learn the notes and be able to spit them back out then you'll be fine on the test. On my first test I got about a 94%, and the first verse test I got 97%. That test was before the medication, but after my first seizure. I studied a little bit more for the next test and got a 61%, and I studied 2 and a half times for more for the second verse test, and I got 50%. Since I had been doing well on the homework and the verse quizzes I managed to not absolutely kill my grade and keep my "A." But those two tests alone brought my grade down from a 98% to a 90.7%, but it was still an "A" so I didn't complain, just thanked God that he kept it at an "A."

I still hadn't figured out that it was the medicine that was causing these problem. I just figured that for some strange reason things weren't "sticking." I didn't even consider the fact that it might be the medicine causing these problems until my mom informed me that those are all possible side effects of Keppra.  It was at this point that I put 2 and 2 together and ended up with 4. I realized that it was the medicine that was causing my memory problems and all that. I still continued to take it because that's what I was supposed to do, but I was glad to have found the source of the problems.

I had another seizure on the Tuesday of Finals week, that wasn't much fun. Same routine, went to the hospital, they decided that nothing was that wrong and let me go. So, I've had 3 trips to the hospital, but I've actually had more seizures than that. At the time I didn't realize that they were seizures it just felt like I had had a load of bricks dropped on me while I was sleeping. But I had the exact same symptoms: feeling like my legs were half-way paralyzed, small red spots on my face, exhaustion, and grogginess. All in all, I've probably had 7 or 8 seizures starting back in November.

So that's my seizure story. My most recent was this past Saturday morning. I woke up lying on the floor, and by the time I made to the bathroom I had figured out that I had had a seizure that morning. I've only had seizures while asleep so it isn't really that bad. The day of the seizure I don't feel so great, but by the next day I'm feeling basically back to normal.

I dislike pills. I won't take a pain pill if I have a headache unless it's really, really, really bad. I don't really have a good reason, I just dislike medicine, it's one of my few completely irrational behaviors. But I have been "learning to get over it" I guess, now that I have become a pill popper. =)

This is Tim, signing out.

(None of the pictures in this post are mine, credit goes to Google images.)