My name is Daren and I live in Kent in the UK. I'm 41 and am a Graphic Designer, self employed. I'm married, with two lovely teenage daughters and (don't tell them this, but) two even lovelier Border Collies!! <joke>. And a budgie! I am very work focused - I have a very responsible position looking after one of the my clients, on of the world's largest companies in its sector. Hence, it is imperative that I am on top of the game and am finding it harder as time goes on due to my epileptic situation, which is detailed below - which is why I'm here.
I'm on Lamotrogine 2x200mg per day, and have been for around 12 years. I developed photosensitive epilepsy when I was a toddler, the cause being put down as being a bad reaction to a whooping cough injection. I went through my formative years, probably up to my mid teens, having grand-mal seizures, mainly due to teenage angst circled around my lack of respect for my medication; they were real thrashers - my body ached for days afterwards. My medical history during this time was very well documented due to my regular tests, EEGs and such (no brain scans, though) and oputpatients visits.
Then things calmed down and the medication was on top of it all without incident. I was able to work proficiently, I was passed fit to drive and was able to live a normal life. In 2002, I woke up one morning and couldn't remember a thing about the day before - it had been my eldest child's sports day, which was a hot, sunny day and I wasn't wearing a hat; it was presumed to be a mild case of sunstroke and I carried on about my day. Sure enough, as the day progressed, I started to remember more as I was reminded about it. This was about a year after being transferred to Lamotrogine. Previously I had been on Epilim (1000mg per day!), and before that, Epanutin (chalky, chewable tablets - yuk!).
2 years previous to this, I moved house - about 40 miles away. I still worked near where I previously lived and, deciding that keeping continuity going was best policy, I remained with my then-current GP and consultant. However, as time moved on, it was deemed more convenient to move things to closer to where I live now and I transferred.
Things seemed to move pretty quickly under the new regime and very soon I was put in for a brainscan. The result of that was pretty startling - I have a temporal lobe arachnoid cyst on the left side of my brain, and quite sizeable it is too! I'd already started to experience patchy memory and concentration issues and the location of the cyst (in an area of the brain that controls such functions as logic and memory issues) seemed to - in my mind - put this down as the root cause of my problems; thank God my work is mainly creative!!
So that's my history, here's where I am now...
I'm getting pretty close to being terminally frustrated about this 'condition'; With regards to my work, I have gone from being absolutely brilliant at my job (and that's client's testiments, not my own) to being pretty good at best and, at times, damn-near incompetent, although I am in a position where, most of the time, I can cover up or rectify any issues before it all goes tits-up! Sometimes I forget things virtually as soon as they are said to me, other times not. Sometimes I get on with a task only to get to a stage where it dawns on me that I didn't complete it, as though somewhere along the line, I drifted off onto something else without realising, only to find that what I WAS doing is still sitting there waiting for me to finish it. If I'm on the phone and there is any sort of background noise, I can't zone in on either so I have to insist on complete silence whilst I try to concentrate on what people are saying to me.
My job is very important to me and, based on my previous efforts, I am very well respected in what I do and am holding a position which, in reality, is something that three people would struggle to do; I had never been mentally average - for instance, I passed my English language exams at school FOUR YEARS early and at the age of nine had a reading age of NINETEEN.
I have been for cognitive testing twice in the past three years and both times I was deemed to be mentally proficient - or 'average'. In my eyes, the tests were not real-world enough to deem me anything other than 'average'. As a graphics man, looking at pictures is something I'm supposed to take seriously, so matching up pairs isn't the most taxing of exercises; I was read a story and it was about a man - whose name I couldn't even remember - who ran a shop that was being demolished to make space for a shopping centre. My work is comprehensively connected to the retail sector and I know all about these things, so answering questions on the subject was a doddle. I explained this, but it wasn't deemed important... but that's digression.
To end ('Thank God', I hear you utter), I'm in limbo. Memory is a huge issue, concentration is a major concern and it's causing me to be moody, sometimes angry and at times, so down that it's troubling. And now, having read several posts in several forums, I'm majorly convinced that it's down to my medication. I am (April 2012) currently awaiting a hospital appointment to discuss tackling this issue with, in my eyes, the intention of discussing a change from Lamotrigine to something else.
So, I'm here to try to blend in and maybe glean and offer meaningful information with the community. Thanks for taking the last hour to read this and I hope we might be able to interact soon...
D
I'm on Lamotrogine 2x200mg per day, and have been for around 12 years. I developed photosensitive epilepsy when I was a toddler, the cause being put down as being a bad reaction to a whooping cough injection. I went through my formative years, probably up to my mid teens, having grand-mal seizures, mainly due to teenage angst circled around my lack of respect for my medication; they were real thrashers - my body ached for days afterwards. My medical history during this time was very well documented due to my regular tests, EEGs and such (no brain scans, though) and oputpatients visits.
Then things calmed down and the medication was on top of it all without incident. I was able to work proficiently, I was passed fit to drive and was able to live a normal life. In 2002, I woke up one morning and couldn't remember a thing about the day before - it had been my eldest child's sports day, which was a hot, sunny day and I wasn't wearing a hat; it was presumed to be a mild case of sunstroke and I carried on about my day. Sure enough, as the day progressed, I started to remember more as I was reminded about it. This was about a year after being transferred to Lamotrogine. Previously I had been on Epilim (1000mg per day!), and before that, Epanutin (chalky, chewable tablets - yuk!).
2 years previous to this, I moved house - about 40 miles away. I still worked near where I previously lived and, deciding that keeping continuity going was best policy, I remained with my then-current GP and consultant. However, as time moved on, it was deemed more convenient to move things to closer to where I live now and I transferred.
Things seemed to move pretty quickly under the new regime and very soon I was put in for a brainscan. The result of that was pretty startling - I have a temporal lobe arachnoid cyst on the left side of my brain, and quite sizeable it is too! I'd already started to experience patchy memory and concentration issues and the location of the cyst (in an area of the brain that controls such functions as logic and memory issues) seemed to - in my mind - put this down as the root cause of my problems; thank God my work is mainly creative!!
So that's my history, here's where I am now...
I'm getting pretty close to being terminally frustrated about this 'condition'; With regards to my work, I have gone from being absolutely brilliant at my job (and that's client's testiments, not my own) to being pretty good at best and, at times, damn-near incompetent, although I am in a position where, most of the time, I can cover up or rectify any issues before it all goes tits-up! Sometimes I forget things virtually as soon as they are said to me, other times not. Sometimes I get on with a task only to get to a stage where it dawns on me that I didn't complete it, as though somewhere along the line, I drifted off onto something else without realising, only to find that what I WAS doing is still sitting there waiting for me to finish it. If I'm on the phone and there is any sort of background noise, I can't zone in on either so I have to insist on complete silence whilst I try to concentrate on what people are saying to me.
My job is very important to me and, based on my previous efforts, I am very well respected in what I do and am holding a position which, in reality, is something that three people would struggle to do; I had never been mentally average - for instance, I passed my English language exams at school FOUR YEARS early and at the age of nine had a reading age of NINETEEN.
I have been for cognitive testing twice in the past three years and both times I was deemed to be mentally proficient - or 'average'. In my eyes, the tests were not real-world enough to deem me anything other than 'average'. As a graphics man, looking at pictures is something I'm supposed to take seriously, so matching up pairs isn't the most taxing of exercises; I was read a story and it was about a man - whose name I couldn't even remember - who ran a shop that was being demolished to make space for a shopping centre. My work is comprehensively connected to the retail sector and I know all about these things, so answering questions on the subject was a doddle. I explained this, but it wasn't deemed important... but that's digression.
To end ('Thank God', I hear you utter), I'm in limbo. Memory is a huge issue, concentration is a major concern and it's causing me to be moody, sometimes angry and at times, so down that it's troubling. And now, having read several posts in several forums, I'm majorly convinced that it's down to my medication. I am (April 2012) currently awaiting a hospital appointment to discuss tackling this issue with, in my eyes, the intention of discussing a change from Lamotrigine to something else.
So, I'm here to try to blend in and maybe glean and offer meaningful information with the community. Thanks for taking the last hour to read this and I hope we might be able to interact soon...
D
