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New onset epilepsy first semester into law school - Status epileptic every time

Wed, 01/16/2019 - 11:20
Hello All, I graduated with a B.A. in May of 2017 while working full-time. I moved to with my wife and daughter to a new town and began law school later that Fall. I had no history of seizures or epilepsy. During law school I started getting really stressed - beyond anything I had experienced before. This was normal obviously - law school is stressful. However, for me it was very unusual. I was always the person in our family that would never get stressed - my wife used to be amazed at my tolerance levels for stress and would ask, "how in the world do you handle all of this?". I used to say, "you get used to it, and then it's no big deal." Anyway, after my first semester ended, and before the beginning of the second semester, I woke up in the hospital one day. Apparently I slipped into a status epileptic state and had 3 documented tonic - clonic seizures. It is possible I had more, but we do not know how many I had before my wife found me. They ran a bunch of tests and everything cleared medically speaking. I was diagnosed with "new onset seizures" and given Keppra 500mg 2x per day. I made the tough choice to quit law school - this was really hard on me. We moved back the town we had come from. Three months later I woke up in the hospital again. Same type of situation - this time my wife heard me make a loud moaning noise and went to check on me - I was in the midst of another tonic - clonic seizure. She called 911 and I had 2 more tonic - clonics in the ambulance - Status Epileptic again. I was sent home later that evening with the diagnosis " recent onset seizures". There was no change to my medication A month later - same thing again - except this time I actually remember slipping into the seizure. I was right in front of my Dad at his house and stood up and said "OH NO" and he grabbed me....Woke up in the hospital. I had one seizure there in front of him and another one in the ambulance. Status epileptic once more - They upped my Keppra to 500mg 3x per day. In the meantime, I have seen a neurologist. She is trying to wean me off of Keppra and increase a new dosage of Lamotrigine (Lamictal). Keppra turns me into quite an angry individual, I become hot-blooded and yell at people, not to mention that my stress tolerance is extremely low - and then I start yelling once I surpass it. It has been 5 months since I had a seizure. I just got 4 hours of sleep last night in preparation for a "sleep deprived EEG" Maybe that's why I am so talkative? I don't know. I have a history of severe head trauma - hitting my head a few times in the same place very hard - but never lost consciousness After the first seizure they did a CT scan and stated the area in my frontal lobe has Gliosis which I guess is scar - tissue. So anyway...thank you for reading.

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