Cheers Janus, just turned 40 and that gives me hope I might still find 'the keeper'
I was diagnosed in 95 after a bout of supposed encephalitis left me in a 6 week coma. Very luckily I made it through that but was left with 3 years complete memory loss and very faded memories before that, temporary paralysis, some brain damage and the tonic clonics.
For most of that year I had to learn how to move and talk again, so it's very easy to look back and see that as the starting point for my 'new' life- but there was still a lot of the old me there, waiting to be found
When I got back to being mobile and chatty again, I managed to keep hold of a lot of my previous life- mainly through my awesome friends constantly reminding me of those 3 years, and from their stories I built some false but still real memories if you know what I mean, and these helped a fair few real memories come back eventually.
Once the seizures were controlled a bit, I did carry on with my previous life as best I could- had the same interests etc, and a lot of things stayed the same. In fact really, apart from dealing with the E and side effects, and learning to live with the fuzziness, memory gaps, and weird bits of brain damage, I'm pretty much the same as I ever was..
It's taken me a long long time to get back to being me, and there've certainly been years of dark times and screaming at the sky.
But I'm back, seizures are a bit more controlled, and the meds are just an annoyance. Guess I'm saying, if you fight for it, you don't have to lose your old self to the E.