[Research] Oh no -- here comes the sun

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Free Range is another one of those terms you have to watch out for down here...too many people have this vision of chickens running around a farm/ pasture getting nice and fat on bugs and greens and what have :sad: What it REALLY means is, in order to be labeled as such by USDA standards, the birds have to have had access to the outside. They didn't have to go outside, there didn't need to be grass outside (there usually isn't) and there is no guideline on how large the space outside must be. I've seen the great (small/hobby farmers) and the bad (huge commercial) side of this.

I use to raise chickens for a living...small farmer type...I get kinda passionate about it :lol:
 
Oh yeah, it's caffeinated. No caffeine headache as yet, so I'm pleased. I'm a little groggier than usual, but not extremely.

Apparently use of hormones for pork and poultry feed has been banned in Canada since the '60's. We often follow USDA rules here, instead of making our own.
 
lol I wrote an article about organic foods a couple of years ago, so it's still sort of fresh in my mind.
 
Thursday, March 11, 2010

Lamotrigine 200 mg
Effexor XR 150 mg
taken 11:15

Hated waking partner up this morning. Judging by his breathing, it was the best rest he got most of the night. I counted four staring spells before I left.

Green tea to start off with. He's been sleeping on-and-off all morning. Wakes up with all over pain and confusion. Ate brown rice cereal for breakfast.

xanax .5 mg taken 1 pm (maybe?) Slept on and off all day, into the night. Confusion, exhaustion and pain all over.
 
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Friday, March 12, 2010

Lamotrigine 200 mg
Effexor XR 150 mg
Xanax 1 mg
taken 11:15

Seemed to sleep well last night. I worked a 17-hour day, so I was out like a light. He woke up in a puddle of drool. Maybe had activity that he doesn't recall, and I slept through?

Ate eggs and home-made hashbrowns with onion and garlic and a banana for brunch. Had one coffee (borrowed money of mum) because both of us had a stark-raving caffeine headache by noon.

Good energy and little confusion all day due to his taking 2 xanax first thing. Actually, he's been a chatty cathy -- not sure if the xanax works because it relieves stress from the back pain, or if it simply provides seizure control. No space-outs.

At around 4 pm had several beginnings of epigastric rising sensation which stopped short of his tongue. I asked if it was maybe just heartburn, but he says it feels different. So basically it seems the episodes were stopped from being completed. A little later he had sudden trembling/shaking in his left hand lasting a few minutes. Right hand was steady.

Snacked on an orange. Ate curried noodles with peas, carrots and onion for dinner. Snuck a candy bar for dessert.

D'oh, momentary stare and confusion a few minutes ago. It's getting late though (11:30)

Just read out the entry to partner, and he noted how interesting it is that xanax gives him energy and focus, instead of making him slurry and tired. Good point!
 
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One of the side effects of withdrawing from Effexor can be drooling, so that might be another explanation for his morning droolpuddle.
 
Saturday, March 13, 2010

Lamotrigine 200 mg
Effexor XR 150 mg
Xanax --
taken 12:00

Seemed to sleep well last night. Nothing happened that either of us recall.

Woke up late, but we were up past 4am. He woke up with good energy and all chatty. Had one burning smell incident -- he always gets angry with the smells, but we can't tell if it's something that goes hand-in-hand with the smell, or if it's just because the smell is just so awful and affects his taste too. He can't eat for about a half hour after, because everything tastes disgusting.

Additional note -- for the last two weeks or so, partner has had bloodshot eyes, and I thought the whites were turning blue (he disagrees, although, it's apparently happened to him before). Since last weekend, they have been slowly clearing up, although yesterday he still had some pretty red spots. Today he woke up and they're perfectly white. No bloodshot, no bluish tint.

Sudden onset abdominal pain, then all over pain and exhaustion at 1:30. Breathing exercises helped to calm the mind but a hoot help clear everything. We need to look at how he uses that to help him.
 
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Sunday, March 14, 2010

Lamotrigine 200 mg
Effexor XR 150 mg
Xanax --
taken 12:00

I didn't wake up to any activity in the night, and partner doesn't recall any either, but he woke up very angry, and remained at a low simmer all day. Had a morning and an afternoon instance of sudden exhaustion, all over pain. Both were preceded by a staring spell. Several episodes of epigastric rising between each episode.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Lamotrigine 200 mg
Effexor XR 150 mg
Xanax --
taken ??

Active night last night. Before I fell alseep, he was already out and scratching and shifting his body. Legs would kick out small kicks and we both woke up to some bigger kicks and very fast spasms in his arms (we've nicknamed it machinegunning). Woke up in a fairly good mood, with decent energy, but a lot of pain.

Awake for less than an hour and already has burning smell happening.

[If you're uncomfortable with marijuana use, stop reading now. Also, I am not advocating the use of cannabis to anybody -- this is exclusively for partner's benefit that we're looking at this right now. Cannabis has always helped him deal with the after-effects of seizures (improved energy, improved focus, pain relief). We're looking at how we can use it as a preventative medecine now. Since it provides instant, but not long-lasting relief for him, we were wondering if it can work to prevent kindling from spreading. When he has an episode of smells, or colours, or staring, we're going to see if cutting those out with the use of cannabis can prevent the bigger episodes later in the day. Will be referred to as took C]

Took C, and the smell stopped instantly. No 10 minute after-effect, no more bad taste.

Forgot his meds this morning. Hopefully when he gets home he'll take the lamictal, but he'll have to leave the effexor for tomorrow. Had epigastric rising just after noon and sniffles? I don't know if that's something, but he's not one to get a runny nose, and now he has them all the time.

Late afternoon mood swing, very angry, accompanied by increased pain in his legs and back. Possibly worsened mood because of the missing Effexor dose today? Although the mood is comparable to the one that made him decide to lower the dose in the first place. His face and upper body were hot when I came home, but are cooling rapidly.

8:30 pm, three successive episodes of epigastric rising with salivation in a half-hour period.

Went to sleep without incident. Woke up to him moaning and doing small kicks at regular intervals this morning. He woke up several times in the night to his whole body clenching rhythmically.
 
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I went on youtube last week and showed partner videos of different types of seizures. We sort of clicked through one after the other. I showed him what a t/c looked like and even he admitted it looked scary, but he thought it might be smart for me to desensitize myself by watching them, in case he ever gets a t/c.

Anyway, one of the vids showed a teen having drop seizures (where he head drops), and he asked me if it was a seizure, and I explained the head drops were the seizure. He was shocked. He apparently used to do that all the time when he still drank (he doesn't drink anymore). He smashed bottles with his teeth, because his head dropped so quickly and unexpectedly.

In that video, and also another video of a young girl having absence seizures, both of them supported their heads with their hands in a way that partner does all the time (same angle, same fidgety way of doing it). I pointed it out to him, and he agreed that he does that, so much so that his family had asked him why he always does that.

We saw some up-close myoclonic seizure activity, where the person's eyes moved all around, rolling back, eyelids opening slightly, and then back and forth. Since he usually has his back to me when he's sleeping, I rarely get a good look at his eyes when he's active. He said partners in his past have told him that's what his eyes do when he's having an active sleep.

All-in-all, it was very educational for him, and made him feel more normal. He's becoming very comfortable with the idea that these are seizures he's experiencing.

He told his mom again about seizures, and she responded that she's going to Florida next week. His brother came over and we told him, and he didn't say anything, so I got annoyed and asked what was wrong with them, since they seemed so disinterested about his health problems. Partner thought that was funny. That led to a long discussion of symptoms and how long he's had them, and I could see in brother's face that he was re-assessing memories of partner when he was a child, and it was like a little lightbulb going off in his head. I look forward to future discussions with him, and maybe he can fill me in on experiences that partner doesn't recall.
 
:agree:
Its good now that you are able to make them recall memories of things that he has done in the past.
 
Had rhythmic shoulder/arm spasms, then abdominal spasms, then leg spasms as he was falling asleep. A few second of rest and repeat the pattern two more times
Click to expand...

A similar thing used to happen to me before my meds were upped. There was a pattern for a while for about a month and I informed my doctor about this. He said my brain was in it's most vulnerable state before sleep and this is why the seizure struck at this strange hour. I personally think it was just the nature of the FLE.

tam bam
 
Hopefully I'll get an opportunity to talk to partner's brother about things when they were young, but, like all the members of the family, he's a little difficult to draw information from. It's a good sign that he was listening, and that he was making his own mental connections with what we were telling him.

tam bam, it could be the nature of FLE, I don't know. He normally jerks around during stage 1 sleep (way more than is normal), but he doesn't usually get that bad during stage 1 sleep. In fact, he rarely has that much physical activity -- it's usually less dramatic than that.
 
It wasn't an all the time thing in stage one sleep. It only happend for about 2weeks then it stopped.

There are many patterns with my seizures like this. The seizures can take on a certain pattern for a short amount of time and then switch up and on me and take on another pattern and go on for another short amount of time. If that makes any sense at all. :ponder:

tam bam
 
That makes total sense -- partner's in exactly that kind of pattern switching right now *sigh*
 
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