New drug

Well, I'm being moved onto a new drug. It's called Keppra. I'm going to be weaned off Lamotrigine at the same time as being switching to the new one. Basically I'm going to start at 250mg twice a day, moving up to 1500mg twice a day! God knows how many pills that will involve...

Reading the side effects is never a good thing to do. But I did. I'm sure that there's nothing there that one couldn't suffer from by having hay-fever medicine or something. The biggest problem however is that my seizures are seemingly random and so I can't really tell what is the cause or what is effective at stopping the seizures. It's like the old joke about the guy selling an anti-elephant machine in England. Someone asks him how he can tell if it works. The guy replies "Well, have you seen any elephants recently?

Anyway, the neurologist seems to be worried enough to write to my doctor. I also had my MRI scan today and I have my copy of the results on CD, but I won't have any feedback until next week some time. Unless it's urgent. So I hope I won't be hearing anything until next week...

Welcome back MRI

The neurologist is a little worried that I've had as many seizures as I've had over a relatively short period. So he's looking to migrate me to a different drug and also to get me to have another MRI scan. This time, however, it'll be at the hospital where I have headphones so I won't have the embarrassment of the radiographers hearing my sweary choice of music.

He seems quite cool about the whole thing as if it's just an irritation to me rather than some life-threatening problem, but I think he's just intrigued as to why I'm still having the seizures.

Hopefully he'll find some reason.

A fishy time?

I only make entries here if I'd had a seizure or a mini-seizure or some interesting medical discovery to add and this time is no difference.

Yesterday (11/4) I had another seizure, this time in The London Aquarium. Luckily, it was quite near the exit so it was easy(ish) for the ambulance to get to me. I realised one was coming and so I had some Clobozam (a drug that tries to calm down seizures) but it wasn't sufficient. To begin with, I sat on the floor, feeling the seizure build up and looking at people walking by and giving me funny looks. After that, I have no memory of what happened until I got to hospital (St. Thomas') but apparently I was stretchered and wheeled out as it was not possible to get me to stand up. In the ambulance I was given diezepam and the next thing I know, I'm being helped into a hospital bed. The night before, I sat on an office chair which broke beneath me (it was not to my weight) and landed on my coccyx and that was painful, and so getting myself into bed was also not very comfortable. Then my memory was blank again and when I came to the next time I had a raging headache and a cannula in my left arm. Then I had all the various checks - an ECG, arm and leg strength, reflex tests, tests to make sure my eyes were able to follow finger movements, etc. And that was it and we were free to go. The tube journey was fine and even though it was a Friday evening around rush hour, we all managed to get a seat. I went to bed early and then an hour later I could feel another seizure starting up. I had another Clobozam, laid down again and rode it through. Luckily, this one didn't carry on to a full seizure.

Anyway - my "allowed to drive" clock has been reset once again...

And the next one, perlease

This was a very minor precursor, but you never know whether it's going to remain like that or whether it's going to turn into something more severe. It's extremely difficult to nail down what causes all this; there does not seem to be any specific events or whatever that one could attribute to this happening. I just get certain signals, and then I panic. This is when I ask for the Clobazam and hope for the best. Most of the time it seems to work.

So - this time it seemed to work and, apart from feeling a bit drowsy, I was able to carry on my day normally. But it all is a problem. At least this one doesn't count as a seizure.