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Diagnosed with epilepsy
Thu, 05/04/2017 - 08:40Topic: Living With Epilepsy - Youth
Hello everyone,
I got my first seizure at the age of 16 in November 2016. Went through MRI scan + EEG scan, everything looked normal. Just this week I had my second seizure (19 now). Went to the hospital with my parents, had to spend the night there again and did an EEG scan. Again, everything looked fairly normal. My niece does have a history of seizures so they think it might be familial. They prescribed me 2x Keppra 500mg a day and I've been reading bad stuff about it (sleeplessness, depression, not being aware of surroundings,...) and this seems all very scary to me...But then again I don't want to have a seizure again, it was horrible the first two times, I don't ever want there to be a third time :(
I've been feeling terrible and afraid since the second seizure because I don't want my life to change... I want to keep my driving license because I love driving and I love cars...I want to keep going to school and study late at night, work on projects, play videogames, go out with friends, etc...
I'm already allergic to pretty much everything and have asthma...So I keep asking myself, why me?
What should I do? I keep wanting to believe it's just a coincidence since they happened 2-3 years apart from eachother but the doctors tell me otherwise. This all seems to be happening so fast, I had so many plans for the future that seem to have faded away all of a sudden.
What should I do? How do i cope with having epilepsy? How do I stop being scared?
Why You??? A little answer
Submitted by just_joe on Thu, 2017-05-04 - 23:09
Why You??? A little answer may be why not you...Have you ever tried putting down your devices and thought and listened to people around you?? You have been reading about what this person or that person had when taking a medication.. Well side effects do happen. Do you read about the side effects on your over the counter meds?? If you researched you would se that aspirin has killed some people.My neurologist is in a group of neurologists that do the drug tests on medications. Medication couplings. Medications that were created for one seizure to see if it will work on other seizuresNow yes side effects do happen. But with most people they go away as the body gets used to the medication as the therapeutic levels build in your body. 5-8% of the people on a medication may have a side effect. Which means 92-95% of the medication taking it have no problems with it. For ME I'll go with the 29-95% and live my life like the guy next door.As for driving. Many people with epilepsy drive. You like cars. So do I. They wouldn't let me drive but I sure could fix the engines and take them apart and over haul them making then go faster and move out peeling rubber. As for school I was in the honor roll. They wouldn't let me in shop. So I went into drafting. I could take a motor apart and put it together on paper. Good field of work.You have plans for the future. Fine keep them and make adjustments to your plans. I did Your life isn't overOh and as for the Keppra. I have been using it for about 12-15 years. It is only the best seizure medication I have ever used in the 50 years I have been taking them. The time in my seizures was reduced and the time to get back to normal was also reduced. My seizures used to last 5-8 minutes and the post ictal time used to be 15-45 minutes. Now I can have a seizure and they last a couple of seconds. You wouldn't know I had one if you were watching me and looking for one.