Here's a song I think we can all relate to

[ilexa margareta]

Even if it is a little melodramatic! It's based on the idea of the horror of the 1940s-70s care homes for epileptics. It reminds me very much of how I was treated in school.

Manic Street Preachers - Virginia State Epileptic Colony

They sit around tables, rendered dumb
Coloured sticks of chalk are passed around
Today the doctors allow the illusion of choice
Tomorrow the necks split, there is no voice

Piggy
V.S.E.C
Cleaning, cooking, flower-arranging
Dissolves a kind of liberation

Draw a perfect circle, sleep foetus-like
Six chalk colours, the very meaning of life
They wake to strobes and half-circled light
Confusion lifts with potassium percolate

V-S-E-C piggy
Piggy, piggy
Piggy, piggy
Cleaning, cooking, flower-arranging
Dissolves a kind of liberation

Pig pig piggy
V.S.E.C.
Cleaning, cooking, flower-arranging
Dissolves a kind of liberation

Pig pig piggy
V.S.E.C.
Cleaning, cooking, flower-arranging
Dissolves a kind of liberation

There's a sample in the middle - I think it's a neurologist speaking - but I can't make out the words.
Also - there's no such medication as "potassium percolate". I do wonder what Richey meant?

 

[Ruth]

Were you in one of the homes? I heard about another person who was in a home.. It was a horrible experience for him, too.

You need a :hugs:

 

[Nakamova]

Also - there's no such medication as "potassium percolate". I do wonder what Richey meant?

There's a chemical called potassium perchlorate that's used to treat hyperthyoidism. I think at one point it was thought that it might control epilepsy. See: https://books.google.com/books?id=g...&q=potassium perchlorate and epilepsy&f=false

We're lucky in this day and age not to be shuffled off to asylums, over-sedated with useless medications, sterilized, etc.

 

[Blonde Angel]

Yeah Nakamova.
but I do wonder about misdiagnosis, people who still feel ashamed to have a relative with certain conditions...not getting the help they need. eg exorcisms instead of being assessed by professionals.

Skeletons in the closet still exists.
Sends chills down my spine.

 

[Nakamova]

yes, there's still a long way to go....

 

[ilexa margareta]

Were you in one of the homes? I heard about another person who was in a home.. It was a horrible experience for him, too.

You need a :hugs:

I was never in a formal epileptics' home, but I was held in a residential mental institution, where I had been being treated, for an extra couple of months after I was due to leave, because I was sent for an EEG during my assessment for schizoaffective disorder and had a tonic-clonic during the part with the strobe. They went ahead with the psychiatric diagnosis anyway, as it fit (hah) me closely, but also diagnosed me with epilepsy, and kept me hanging around a smelly, dingy, loud, and generally inhospitable environment "for my safety". It was exactly like the song: aimless artsy things all day, every day, meds call at 8, with the looming threat of unnecessary surgery ever-present. I was offered an occipital lobotomy - I turned it down, saying I'd rather try more AEDs - but the neurologist insisted that an occipital lobotomy would be safer than some AEDs.

 

[Belinda5000]

There have been drugs for epilepsy since the late 19th century I believe and it was replaced by Phenobarb around 1930 in the 20th century.There were only 6 drug AEDs in the 1960's and if you weren't controlled that was just to bad, I know because I took everyone of them. I grew up in the 60's and 70's ans when your refractory and nothing works and your mom thinks your dumb because you can't remember anything. I was on Dilantin and it erased my memory.I didn't come off it till Iwas an adult.. If I can handle my epilepsy anyone can.

 

[seizuregirl]

There's another song, not about epileptics, but it talks about drugs, and that's In The Year 2525, by Zager and Evans-

"In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today"

It makes me wonder, will that be possible? Ever since being diagnosed, when hearing this song it peaks my interest with that verse. That EVERYONE, whether you have a medical problem or not would have to suffer with taking a pill everyday, like those of us with medical problems who truly need to.

Granted it's just fiction, but just perhaps, that pill would make our seizures happen at a certain time during the day so we could be prepared for it! And perhaps we could choose what type of seizure to have too! That would be great in my opinion!

 

[MichaelJO7]

A story was done of a "mental institution" where bones were discovered of former patients in unmarked graves in Minnesota. The institution has been closed for decades (?). If I remember correctly, some of the bones are being tested using current technology (DNA testing) to identify their remains.

There are advertisements in Minnesota to start talking about depression. It concerns me deeply because I don't even think the professionals have a good understanding of what they are dealing with just yet.

Ilexa: I had a relative who likely experienced some of what you were posting. He was declared legally dead seven years before his death. He could not be found anywhere in the US (or known world). Where was he? In a mental institution. He died of a heart attack, at age 55, and from what I have heard, he knew he was going to die. I don't think the doctors listened to him, because he was, you guessed it, schizophrenic.

This is what is so tragic about persons who are suffering and considered mentally ill, or, who are smarter and wiser than their doctors. Many of them are simply ahead of the time, and have figured things out before other people have.

Who was this relative? He was my father.