elizzza811
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Hi everyone! I haven't 'officially' been diagnosed with epilepsy (yet) - I'm still awaiting my 24-hour EEG results - but I'm pretty certain that is what is going on with me (causing a car accident described below). So I thought I'd post my story and then ask questions afterwards about the relationship between epilepsy and some other things going on with me.
I'm a 46 yo female and had been on Klonopin pretty much non-stop for close to 15 years for what doctors were calling 'anxiety' attacks. These 'anxiety attacks' would erupt suddenly, whether I was stressed or not, and would cause me to feel nervous and shaky, or even panicky and fearful. Klonopin worked so well with these 'anxiety' attacks that I remained on this medication pretty consistently for those 15 years, at least until 2005. In fact, Klonopin was the only medication out of all the psychotropics doctors tried that reliably and consistently helped any of my psychiatric symptoms.
I won't get into too many details here, but after being treated like a "doctor-hopping" "drug addict" (presumably seeking benzos), simply for seeing doctors and trying to find some rational explanation for my growing list of symptoms, I decided to cold-turkey the Klonopin on my own. Again, this was 6 years ago, back in 2005. I was so sick, yet all doctors could come up with were "psychosomatic tendencies" or some other offshoot of my untreated depression, anxiety, and OCD. Symptoms included dizzy spells, memory problems, personality changes, joint pain, ongoing GI issues, weight loss, SEVERE ever-worsening insomnia, SEVERE ever-worsening OCD. I thought I finally had my answer late in 2006 when I was finally diagnosed with chronic Lyme, bartonella, and babesia, but some symptoms never budged, in spite of long-term antibiotics for these infections.
The #1 symptom unaffected by antibiotics was (and remains) this non-stop 'tugging' or 'pulling' sensation in my lower jaw and teeth, causing me to clench my teeth 24/7. It feels like there is a magnet in each of my 8 lower front teeth that is constantly trying to 'connect' to a magnet somewhere up above, and the teeth in question are all sawed down, chipped, and/or tend to develop a grey metallic coating (on the backsides and in between) which even the dentist has had trouble removing.
I also experience episodes of extreme head pressure involving the base of my skull and have gone to doctors begging them to run tests because it feels as if my head isn't draining properly much of the time. Back in September of 2010 I did just that, but my primary doctor refused any further testing unless I agreed to relinquish my psychiatric records to her, refused me a referral to a neurologist, and wouldn't even release medical records to me so that I could find another primary (unless I agreed to pay a $25 fee). I was so tired of 'stand-offs' with doctors that I decided to just suffer and never see a doctor again.
I did finally find a neurologist a month later who didn't require any referrals, but when the MRI and MRA both came back normal, I just gave up.
Then in December 2010, everything came to a head. I woke up that morning feeling especially lousy and probably would have never gone anywhere in my car, but I had agreed the night before to give my neighbor and good friend a ride to the store to pick up some carpet. I got in the car that morning, drove maybe 2 miles, and next thing I knew, we were in a storm drain 6 feet away from a telephone pole with police and ambulance personnel looking on. The progression of symptoms was as follows....
1) Funny taste in my mouth, followed by a brief dizzy spell (though I didn't and never seem to lose complete consciousness).
2) Tunnel Vision - my peripheral vision shrunk considerably. I could see the hood of my car, my neighbor peripherally, and not much else.
3) I could hear my neighbor freaking out (though she sounded far away), see her vaguely out of the corner of my eyes, but I could not respond to her, steer, or brake. And I didn't really realize the seriousness of what had just happened until much later. In fact, it was a surprise to me when my neighbor showed me one tire was hanging over the edge of the ditch, as I was under the impression that I could just back the car off the shoulder.
4) I maintained the ability to put the car in park.
5) Memory problems and confusion that lasted for hours.
I had another seizure in front of paramedics, but luckily, no injuries from the accident itself, no other vehicles involved, etc...
My questions...
- What type of seizures do you think I'm having? Absence or partial? I actually thought these were nothing more than dizzy spells, though I'd been expressing concerns to doctors over my ever-worsening memory problems. Some mornings I actually wake up with memory problems. Are these seizures, too?
- Will a 24-hour EEG prove seizures if I didn't have any 'events' during it?
- Could my seizures and OCD be somehow related? I noticed that my OCD increased in severity when I stopped the Klonopin, and has grown in intensity in recent years with what are more than likely seizures. In other words, could some sort of electrical abnormality be CAUSING my OCD? Or even the reverse...could OCD-ing so often be CAUSING my seizures?
- Could these ongoing infections - Lyme, bartonella, and babesia - be triggering these seizures?
Any input would be appreciated! Thank you!
I'm a 46 yo female and had been on Klonopin pretty much non-stop for close to 15 years for what doctors were calling 'anxiety' attacks. These 'anxiety attacks' would erupt suddenly, whether I was stressed or not, and would cause me to feel nervous and shaky, or even panicky and fearful. Klonopin worked so well with these 'anxiety' attacks that I remained on this medication pretty consistently for those 15 years, at least until 2005. In fact, Klonopin was the only medication out of all the psychotropics doctors tried that reliably and consistently helped any of my psychiatric symptoms.
I won't get into too many details here, but after being treated like a "doctor-hopping" "drug addict" (presumably seeking benzos), simply for seeing doctors and trying to find some rational explanation for my growing list of symptoms, I decided to cold-turkey the Klonopin on my own. Again, this was 6 years ago, back in 2005. I was so sick, yet all doctors could come up with were "psychosomatic tendencies" or some other offshoot of my untreated depression, anxiety, and OCD. Symptoms included dizzy spells, memory problems, personality changes, joint pain, ongoing GI issues, weight loss, SEVERE ever-worsening insomnia, SEVERE ever-worsening OCD. I thought I finally had my answer late in 2006 when I was finally diagnosed with chronic Lyme, bartonella, and babesia, but some symptoms never budged, in spite of long-term antibiotics for these infections.
The #1 symptom unaffected by antibiotics was (and remains) this non-stop 'tugging' or 'pulling' sensation in my lower jaw and teeth, causing me to clench my teeth 24/7. It feels like there is a magnet in each of my 8 lower front teeth that is constantly trying to 'connect' to a magnet somewhere up above, and the teeth in question are all sawed down, chipped, and/or tend to develop a grey metallic coating (on the backsides and in between) which even the dentist has had trouble removing.
I also experience episodes of extreme head pressure involving the base of my skull and have gone to doctors begging them to run tests because it feels as if my head isn't draining properly much of the time. Back in September of 2010 I did just that, but my primary doctor refused any further testing unless I agreed to relinquish my psychiatric records to her, refused me a referral to a neurologist, and wouldn't even release medical records to me so that I could find another primary (unless I agreed to pay a $25 fee). I was so tired of 'stand-offs' with doctors that I decided to just suffer and never see a doctor again.
I did finally find a neurologist a month later who didn't require any referrals, but when the MRI and MRA both came back normal, I just gave up.
Then in December 2010, everything came to a head. I woke up that morning feeling especially lousy and probably would have never gone anywhere in my car, but I had agreed the night before to give my neighbor and good friend a ride to the store to pick up some carpet. I got in the car that morning, drove maybe 2 miles, and next thing I knew, we were in a storm drain 6 feet away from a telephone pole with police and ambulance personnel looking on. The progression of symptoms was as follows....
1) Funny taste in my mouth, followed by a brief dizzy spell (though I didn't and never seem to lose complete consciousness).
2) Tunnel Vision - my peripheral vision shrunk considerably. I could see the hood of my car, my neighbor peripherally, and not much else.
3) I could hear my neighbor freaking out (though she sounded far away), see her vaguely out of the corner of my eyes, but I could not respond to her, steer, or brake. And I didn't really realize the seriousness of what had just happened until much later. In fact, it was a surprise to me when my neighbor showed me one tire was hanging over the edge of the ditch, as I was under the impression that I could just back the car off the shoulder.
4) I maintained the ability to put the car in park.
5) Memory problems and confusion that lasted for hours.
I had another seizure in front of paramedics, but luckily, no injuries from the accident itself, no other vehicles involved, etc...
My questions...
- What type of seizures do you think I'm having? Absence or partial? I actually thought these were nothing more than dizzy spells, though I'd been expressing concerns to doctors over my ever-worsening memory problems. Some mornings I actually wake up with memory problems. Are these seizures, too?
- Will a 24-hour EEG prove seizures if I didn't have any 'events' during it?
- Could my seizures and OCD be somehow related? I noticed that my OCD increased in severity when I stopped the Klonopin, and has grown in intensity in recent years with what are more than likely seizures. In other words, could some sort of electrical abnormality be CAUSING my OCD? Or even the reverse...could OCD-ing so often be CAUSING my seizures?
- Could these ongoing infections - Lyme, bartonella, and babesia - be triggering these seizures?
Any input would be appreciated! Thank you!
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