Morning,
My name is Mark and I've joined this forum because it seems to be good at understanding and giving helpful answers.
My history is:
I'm on 6 seizures now. I had one at the back end of 09 and one in mid 2010 followed by a 2 year break and I've had 4 (plus some mornings of myoclonic jerks) in the last 3.5 months.
At first I thought it was alcohol related as the first 4 times were all after heavy drinking (you can see I learned from my mistakes), but the last 2 have been after no alcohol.
The common theme in these is having a bad night's sleep one night and then the next night waking up during the night (usually to go to the toilet). I start having jerks around the time I get back to bed and then it leads to a seizure. Even with sleep deprivation, it doesn't happen if I wake up more naturally. Perhaps something to do with which sleep cycle I have woken up in? I've been to music festivals for 6 days where it was about 4-5 hours sleep a night with heavy drinking and everything was fin
I know I need to give up alcohol, but it's not that easy. I haven't got the highest self esteem and to be honest, the way people treat you when they think you might have a seizure makes me not want to open up about it (continuing to drink makes things feel normal which is nice). Don't get me wrong, my friends are great. Lovely people and they'd never say a bad word about it, but (some of you have probably experienced this) they just don't understand so it's hard.
Anyway, once my work health insurance goes through (next week or two), I'm going to get myself to a neurologist and get this all sorted out. I've already had a CT scan, ECG, chest x ray, blood and urine tests, 2 MRIs and 3 EEGs (1 was a sleep deprived one). The only thing to show any abnormality was the sleep deprived EEG. To be honest, I can't see what any more of those tests could teach anyone, especially as there is a clear pattern developing. I really didn't want to go on medication, but it looks like I won't have much of a choice.
Also, another reason i can't open up too much about it is that I would be worried about losing my job. I'm a civil engineer and while I sit in an office most of the day (my days of being on site from 7-7 are behind me), construction firms are always going to worry about epileptics (I'm assuming I have epilepsy) so I'm going to wait until I can get a letter from a neurologist saying I'm safe to work before I come out with all the info. I have one from my previous neurologist (I've moved countries), but that was after 1 seizure when we though it was all because I drank too much.
Has anyone else got similar worries or a similar experience with epilepsy. If you had any advice, that would be great!
My name is Mark and I've joined this forum because it seems to be good at understanding and giving helpful answers.
My history is:
I'm on 6 seizures now. I had one at the back end of 09 and one in mid 2010 followed by a 2 year break and I've had 4 (plus some mornings of myoclonic jerks) in the last 3.5 months.
At first I thought it was alcohol related as the first 4 times were all after heavy drinking (you can see I learned from my mistakes), but the last 2 have been after no alcohol.
The common theme in these is having a bad night's sleep one night and then the next night waking up during the night (usually to go to the toilet). I start having jerks around the time I get back to bed and then it leads to a seizure. Even with sleep deprivation, it doesn't happen if I wake up more naturally. Perhaps something to do with which sleep cycle I have woken up in? I've been to music festivals for 6 days where it was about 4-5 hours sleep a night with heavy drinking and everything was fin
I know I need to give up alcohol, but it's not that easy. I haven't got the highest self esteem and to be honest, the way people treat you when they think you might have a seizure makes me not want to open up about it (continuing to drink makes things feel normal which is nice). Don't get me wrong, my friends are great. Lovely people and they'd never say a bad word about it, but (some of you have probably experienced this) they just don't understand so it's hard.
Anyway, once my work health insurance goes through (next week or two), I'm going to get myself to a neurologist and get this all sorted out. I've already had a CT scan, ECG, chest x ray, blood and urine tests, 2 MRIs and 3 EEGs (1 was a sleep deprived one). The only thing to show any abnormality was the sleep deprived EEG. To be honest, I can't see what any more of those tests could teach anyone, especially as there is a clear pattern developing. I really didn't want to go on medication, but it looks like I won't have much of a choice.
Also, another reason i can't open up too much about it is that I would be worried about losing my job. I'm a civil engineer and while I sit in an office most of the day (my days of being on site from 7-7 are behind me), construction firms are always going to worry about epileptics (I'm assuming I have epilepsy) so I'm going to wait until I can get a letter from a neurologist saying I'm safe to work before I come out with all the info. I have one from my previous neurologist (I've moved countries), but that was after 1 seizure when we though it was all because I drank too much.
Has anyone else got similar worries or a similar experience with epilepsy. If you had any advice, that would be great!