Hi Bunkers. I noticed you first posted 5 years ago & have received a few recent replies, but there hasn't been anything more from you. How are you doing now? Is your epilepsy under control now? Is is your fibro & bi-polar? Are those ailments responding to treatment? Endless is right - some medications are used to treat all three ailments. And in many cases, there is no known cause for epilepsy.
Myself, I started having grand mals when I was a year old - obviously not a hormone issue, not food related, not injury related, not stress, no other health problems to trigger it. Along with the grand mals, I had absence seizures. The grand mals stopped by the time I was 6 years old & the absence seizures seemed to stop a few years later. When I was 18, I started having complex partials (although I didn't know what they were until just recently). They continued getting worse over the years.
In my mid-20's, I was diagnosed with fibro. A couple years later CFIDS was added. When I was 30, I was diagnose with bi-polar. Shortly after that, I started losing consciousness & my neuro/psych ran an eeg & diagnosed me with "seizure disorder", but didn't explain anything about it. I didn't think much about it since he didn't make a big deal about it & never discussed it anymore. A few years later, another eeg showe active seizures & my meds were changed. Here again, the meds used for bi-polar are the same as the ones for epilepsy & he only talked to me about the bi-polar. Eventually, he went to work at a psych hospital & didn't take outpatients any more. I started seeing a new psych & forgot about the "seizure disorder". Then I had to go off all my meds because of no insurance. Within a year I stated having strange things happen. My PCP thought muscles spasms, but relaxers didn't work. New symptoms started & she suspected seizures & sent me to another neuro. By then I had insurance again. He confirmed "seizure disorder", but still didn't explain what was going on. So I started doing research, learned "seizure disorder" is the preferred term because of the stigma with the word epilepsy. I was also able to learn what types of seizures I have (5 types). I sat down with my neuro & he confirmed everything.
Well after I started having seizures, my mother also developed seizures, although none of her doctors have given a written diagnosis because she would lose her driving privileges. My mother was also diagnosed with fibro a number of years after I was. She also has sjogren's disease & major depression.
So, were my epilepsy, fibro & bi-polar inherited? That I don't know. It's possible that I inherited thoses genes & they manifested themselves in me before they did in her. As far as we know, there are no ancestors that had epilepsy. But it really doesn't matter how we got epilepsy. The important thing now is to get it treated properly & get the seizures under control. For some people that is fairly easy as they respond well to medication & have no side effects. Unfortunately for me, it is not easy to treat anything. CFIDS (chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome) is an immune disorder & it causes it's victims to be resistant to medication or to have high sensitivity/allergy to mediciation. Such is my problem. I've been on about every epilepsy/bipolar/fibro med there is & am allergic to almost every one. At this moment, I'm on a brand new one for ep & a brand new one for fibro. I don't know if I will be able to stay on them as I started to show some reactions after 2 weeks. But I'm trying to tough it out.
So my advice is don't worry about HOW you got epilepsy, fibro & bipolar. Focus on treating them & getting them under control. I sincerely hope that in the past 5 years since you posted that you have been able to acheive this. And for others that read this, I give the same advise - focus on getting better, not on the past, on what might have been or what might have caused it. It's behind you now. Go forward & conquer! And for those of you like me, who don't respond to treatment, really to all of us, let's just hang in there!
Shelia
