11 years later and still full of worries...

It has been 11 years since my first seizure and I still think about Epilepsy every day. Seizure control has been good lately so it's not tugging at me constantly, but of course every time I pop one of my epilepsy meds into my mouth I am reminded of the worrying that has nagged me for the past 11 years.

I am out of town on business this week and have 3 more days to go. I had my first seizure experience in a hotel room 11 years ago. It was the scariest thing I have ever gone through and every time I am alone in a hotel room at night by myself I think about that event. It was life altering.

Sometimes I worry about it. I worry that I'll be in this hotel room in a foreign city with no family around. I worry that I will have a significant seizure and that I will not awake in the morning.

My husband was here with me for the first few days, enjoying the sightseeing. My sense of security was gone the day he left and the first evening I was alone here. I am a believer of what is meant to happen will happen and that I will accept things when they come and do the best that I can with the experiences that I have in my life. That all makes sense to me logically, but I don't want to be alone when the big one hits. That is my greatest fear... that my seizures will worsen, that I will lose consciousness and no one will wonder where I am and that I will be in a city with no family around. Because that is exactly what happened 11 years ago.

For people who tend to mostly have simple partial or complex partial seizures, you tend to remember your seizures. Remembering those fears and auras that accompany them can be frightening. I meet a lot of carefree individuals that experience tonic clonic or grand mal seizures. They have no recollection of what has occurred, but of course those surrounding them during a seizure recall every moment of it. If everyone who had Epilepsy had the memory of the seizure event I do not think that I would meet as many people who are careless with taking medication or who self-medicate and take anticonvulsants as if it were aspirin and only medicate if they feel they may have a seizure.

I have met many people who have for years suffered partial seizures or auras and were undiagnosed. Most people have lived with it and just assumed it was "normal"... so much so, that they never even mentioned it to parents while they were growing up. It always comes as such a relief to most people when they are finally diagnosed, even if the diagnosis can be frightening. Having your odd feelings vindicated is a wonderful thing regardless of the long term diagnosis. Once you know what you are dealing with the better equipped you are to handle it.