Has anyone else experienced this during work??

[CindyD]

I was wondering if anyone else has discovered that they had had a partial seizure experience where maybe they had just "thought" they lost a few seconds or a minute during work but during that time, you had actually continued to maybe enter data into a computer program or something but it wasn't correct?

I had been working as a bookkeeper for many years and had always gotten excellent progress reviews. Then a few years ago I started having memory problems, etc. and losing gaps of time. Now that I know what was really going on, I understand that I was having partial seizures and that I was pushing myself through what I had thought back then was just some really bad headaches.

During that time I made about a year and a half worth of serious payroll tax calculation mistakes that it took another year to correct. Thank goodness the tax agent that I was working with at the Georgia Dept of Revenue was a kind man and worked with me and also abated the tax penalties so that these mistakes didn't bankrupt the company that I worked for.

Has anyone else experienced this kind of what I can only describe as robotic like behavior? I suspect that I must have been in the middle of doing my tax reports when a partial seizure started and I may have kept entering numbers but they were not the correct numbers. I'm not sure how the software did not flag the numbers as incorrect or why they reconciled or whatever but I was having so many "little" seizures back then that I probably didn't notice any error reports either. I was just wondering if anyone else had these experiences and if so how they handled them with their co-workers, family, etc.

 

[dfwtexas]

Yes! This has happened to me too....now that I know what is going on, when an aura starts, I go to the bathroom. I usually don't make it there before I "check out"...but I seem to know to get into a stall and stay there.
I hate that I cannot be trusted to know what I will do when I am in a seizure!
I have always be the "perfect worker"...this bugs the beejees out of me!

 

[CindyD]

Jgbmartin - Have you told any of your coworkers about what happens? Have you actually found that you continued to type sometimes if you didn't have warning and just had an "out" moment? How did you handle or explain the mistakes to coworkers or superiors?

 

[ziggidypoo]

((((((((((((HUGS)))))))))))


This happened with me when I ran the dyehouse of a hosiery mill - calculating and measuring actual dry dyes from barrels on a very intricate scale and measuring and calculating chemicals and precise timing in the vats and some automated machines at the time - one tiny lapse and I'd end up with a buggy of a thousand dollar error that would stay in the dye house for a year. I was not fired, but seeing that buggy for a year was a bad punishment - instead of the entire buggy being sold to Sears or JC Penny's - 1 or 2 prs at a time would be sold to little nameless stores.

Sometimes, my bosses over the years would "catch me" just staring into space and give me a huge chewing out.

Sometimes, I would DRIVE and when I'd get there not know how I got there.

OR, drive past a destination and not know how I got there and sheepishly go back to where I was supposed to go.

I was arrested once because I forgot to pay for an expired tag that I forgot to get "fixed" - only in jail 1 hour for a bench warrent but my pastor read it in the tiny local paper and asked me what bird didn't fly - a jail bird.

My memory problems and seizures have been in the background all of my life, just never "titled" - so I never fit in - always a day dreamer - hyper religious - etc.

Epilepsy is a lifetime of ........ if not diagnosed and treated properly.

I feel for you - I REALLY do - like you just don't know how.

I am totally disabled because stress would "shut me down" - I'd start a job good and do great and then more responsibilities would be added and I'd space out and slow down and it was more like as someone said : "robotic" only slow. Unacceptable.

However, I had to quit some jobs due to other things - a blown elbow, falls, a blown knee, heart problems, etc.

Sorry for yacking.

Honey, You ain't alone, we are here because we all have problems related in someway to epilepsy and when it affects our employment - that is frightening and we are here to support you and to listen and care. Blessings.


(((((((((((HUGS))))))))

 

[CindyD]

I can't work any more either. I've been trying to get my disability for 3 years and I should finally go before a judge in a few months. I really don't know what those people want. Even my doctor wrote them a letter stating that there is no way that I would be able to do ANY work of ANY kind and I was still denied. I guess that's our tax dollars at work......

 

[entityContext]

Yeah, like me, I mostly have absence seizures in most cases preceeded by this deja vu feeling, of which people staying close to me doesn't notice anything. It's just that after the seizure, I will ask anyone with me if I muttered something that's out of context with what we're discussing and the person will say no, but within me, I know that something actually happened. I will go back to work only to discover after sometime that my new addition to the existing block of codes (I'm a software engineer) doesn't really tally with what's alreadly in place, so what I do most of the time is restore the most latest of the backups of codes and continue working from the last backup. This ensures the validity of the codebase though some minutes of work might be lost in the process.

Just trying to keep it real, it's not been easy though.

So you're not alone.
Cheers...