Oh gosh, honey. I’m so sorry. I’m epileptic–since 7th grade. I don’t think ANYTHING feels as lousy as that initial realization that you’ve had a seizure, especially after you go so long without one.
Luckily, I am pretty well controlled by my meds. But I used to be so scared of having a seizure while in the car with my kids that I began having panic attacks–the onset of which feels just enough like pre-seizure to freak you out. Catch-22 at its best.
I can’t tell you how much I feel for you. It’s a mess too if you drive because they make you get special permission from your neurologist every year for five years after the seizure. Ugh.
You’ve got my support and empathy.
Take it easy. Take care of you.
struuter
Nothing bothers me except those damn herpes outbreaks!
Sometimes I swear that my complete lack of common sense must be a medical condition. People shout to me “don’t jump of the sdecond story balconey”, but I do it anyway. Haven’t actually hurt myself yet (on that one), but it’s bound to hapen sooner or later.
…my neurologist came to the conclusion that I’d been having petite-mal seizures for several years. Just little episodes where I’d space out for a few seconds. No one thought anything about it, really. People just thought I was a little drifty.
My sister did the same thing. As a toddler, she would sometimes stare off into space and babble. My parents had no idea anything was wrong and actually made jokes about her “speaking in tongues.” At 4 she had a grand mal seizure, which led them to understand what had been going on. Fortunately for her, she has never seized since.
I have chronic inflamation of the ulnar nerve-that’s the one that passes through the elbow. I started 8 years ago in one arm, now I have it in both. It comes and goes. When it’s really bad my pinky goes numb and the pain goes all the way up to my shoulder. The biggest factor in controlling it was learning to sleep with my elbow joints relaxed. I had always slept curled up with my arms crossed over my chest and wrists flexed, which pulls the nerve tight through the joint. Hugging a pillow helps to remind me.
No shit Struuter! Since I have an anxiety disorder, I know what you’re saying. Almost every panic attack I have I worry about a seizure. Worrying that it’s a seizure makes every panic attack worse and seem more seizure-like.
Catch-22 100%
-Sam
Saint Zero, don’t give up hope. The flare-ups may stop eventually. I had a whiplash injury that came back on me for years. After 4 or 5 years, though, it seemed to be fully healed. It hasn’t bothered me (knock wood) in over 5 years. I did learn that there were certain things that would bring it on, specifically tilting my head back while raising my arms over my head. It seems to put a lot of strain on the neck muscles. If I change a light bulb, I look briefly to find the socket and then look down and do the rest by touch. And I don’t paint ceilings.
I do that already. 
I do a lot of overhead stuff by touch.
I don’t know if there is something odd about my condition, or maybe I just keep reirritating it myself. Maybe that last, I have problems sleeping in some positions.
Jesus, I guess I’d look like a real selfish bastard complaining about my dry skin problems, wouldn’t I? Ormy back acne?
I (ACHOO!) have (AHH-CHEW!) allergies. SNORT sniff Dust, lint, CAT HAIR (Oh, how I hate cat hair!)…
I don’t know what flew up my nose Saturday night while I was asleep, but I was miserable all day Sunday. Usually, Tylenol Extra Strength Allergy helps, but not last night.
WAAAAAAA–CHOOOOO!!!
This is going to sound so minor compared to the rest of you, but still, it bothers me a lot.
I have eczema on my hands, well it’s actually mostly on two of my fingers. Right now I have big sore blisters and my skin is so tender that it breaks and bleeds all over the place. I can’t use hydrocortisone anymore because it just makes it worse. Well, anyway. It sucks. Not as much as epilepsi or anxiety attacks, but I’m pretty tired of it.
soda,
Hey, don’t belittle your own misfortunes. It’s painful and because it’s your hands you have that constant reminder. It’s not less of a problem…just different.
GaWd,
Yes! I thought I was the only person in the world who felt this way! Funny thing was that while the car was moving I was okay. But when I came to a stop for any reason–please no red lights!–I could feel that awful, spinning feeling behind my eyes, my heart would go double-speed and I would just pray. Thought I had agoraphobia for a while there.
I’m so glad I got through it.
I’m with you.
I realize that you were joking, but since I have oral herpes, I may as well chime in.
Had it since I was four years old. Probably picked it up from sharing a drink in day care or something. It used to flare up at least once a year. This involves walking around with a PAINFULLY swollen fat lip for about three days, then the sore starts leaking and crusting over, which hurts even more. Takes about a week to fully go away.
After high school, I didn’t get one until last year, at my friend Alycia’s wedding. THAT sucked. I have a new prescription, Denavir, which is supposed to get rid of them in 4 days (sooner if you catch it quickly), but I’ve never gotten a chance to use it. knock on wood
Stuff’s $35 for a gram and a half. I did the math once, and found out that it’s more expensive than gold. Probably more expensive than most street drugs, too, although I wouldn’t know these days.
Glad I have insurance…
Although it doesn’t compare to epilepsy, I suffer from chronic sinus problems. Two or three times a week, more if there is mildew around, my sinuses flare up and I have to take medication for it. The main non-nasal symptom is that my teeth hurt. I won’t go into the nasal symptoms because I really don’t want anyone to lose their lunch. I have been told that I will probably require surgery for it. I have also tried a new medicine that does relieve the minor symptoms of Sinusitis. The major drawback is, as the medications usage sheet stated in under-exaggeration, that a minor bad taste may be noted in the mouth. That’s minor is the same way that Chernobyl was a minor release of radiation.
The title of this thread comes close to describing how it feels to have a chronic sinus infection 
Keith
Persephone, my son is 9 and right now we don’t know if he will grow out of the seizures or not because they can’t really figure out what causes them. He is on medication that seems to be doing the trick since it was increased.
Last October he had an MRI done and they found lesions on his brain which they said were not in a part of the brain to cause seizures. They wanted another MRI done in six months to see if there had been any change. Thanks to our wonderful medical system, our next MRI is booked for this coming October. Perhaps then we will be able to find out more information.
I’m very lucky in that he is a happy little boy who just chugs merrily along and takes whatever hits him.
This seems trivial next to everyone’s more important problems, but it drives me crazy.
For years (ever since I started working at law firms), I have been picking at my cuticles. As a result, they are dry, flaky and bloody at all times. Every doctor or other person I told about it would just tell me “Just stop doing it and it will go away.” No one would believe me when I told them I could NOT stop doing it.
Then I read an article on trichotillomania, which usually shows up as a chronic hair-pulling problem, usually in women. It is a behavioral disorder. I went to my doctor and asked him about it, and he said that I probably had a mild form of trichotillomania, and that it is impossible to “just stop doing it.” What a relief! I still have the problem, but just knowing it is a disorder and not a bad habit makes me feel a lot better. Antidepressants are supposed to help a lot, but they made me sick when I took them.
Like I said, not a biggie, but it sure pisses me off.
Gout.
Noty in a league with epilepsy, but when it flares up YOU KNOW IT!!
The killer is that I never know when it will do so. You can avoid purine-filled food (no lobster!), but sometimes it sneaks up anyway. It will nucleate in a freshly injured or strained joint, or sometimes just start on its own.
To say that it is a pain in the toe belittles it, and does it no justice. What it feels like is someone trying to separate your foot ligaments from the bone by pullin them off. Steadily and constantly, with perpetually renewed pain. I the worst case it feels as f something inside is trying to wrestle your tendons off, accompanied by swelling s bad you can’t get your shoe anywhere near on, and inflammation so great that I had to plunge my foot into a basin filled with crushed ice to relieve it (the heat was literally melting an ice cube I’d applied).
Anti-inflammatories are Godsends (said the agnostic), and can defeat an oncoming attack if taken in time. But once an attack has set in it can resist even the strongest of these.
Gout was supposed to be a disease of the rich and well-fed. If only.
“Do you have the honor to be Ben Franklin?”
“I do. Unfortunately, the Gout accompanies the honor.”
– “1776” (“book” by Peter Stone)
For those of you that have said “well, this isn’t as severe as epilepsy,” or something along those lines, let me say this: my seizure disorder barely disrupts my life. Barely. To me, it’s a minor nuisance. Yes, I do have grand-mal seizures, but they happen so rarely that they’re more of an annoyance than anything else. Other people have epilepsy that is far more severe than mine.
The other chronic conditions, like sinus problems & stuff, I don’t have those. And boy, am I glad! My husband has bad sinuses, and he gets miserable from time to time. A friend of mine at work has lupus, like Falcon. She’s been off work for three or four months at a time (she’s off now, in fact) due to this condition. And when I was in school, a friend of mine had eczema on his arms, mostly. Drove him about nuts.
I’m okay today. Sore, but my headache is gone. That’s the worst part–the headache. The headaches I get after seizing are not migraines–I can function. But damn, they hurt. Like someone just kicked in the front of your skull, yanked out your brain, stomped on it, then stuffed it back in through the jagged hole in your head. Advil works quite well for me, though. My jaws hurt, too, from clenching my teeth, and I did bite my lip, so that’s a little puffy, but barely noticible today (yesterday I looked like I’d been punched in the mouth).
Keep sharing, folks–it lets me know I’m not alone!
I’ll have to agree with Persephone. I hardly think about my epilepsy when the seizures are kind enough to stay away. My last seizure was in September so I’ve had a nice long rest from them.
The worst headache I had from a seizure came from the one I had while playing solitaire on the computer cos I managed to hit the table right between my eyes on my way down to the floor. ooh that hurt… besides the rather embarassing scab I had there, like some humongous zit or something.
I have allergies(cats, dust, mold) but I did grow out of my asthma,thank Invisible Pink Unicorn.
I also get awful headaches almost every week. What I really hate are the headaches that are still there when I wake up in the morning. There is nothing worse than waking up with a killer headache.
I have recurring bout with depression too, but that is way too complicated for this thread.
All that stuff is pretty minor, though. Here is my real complaint: I got this rash on my back last week. I have sensitive skin (damn my red hair) so I didn’t pay too much attention to it. Then it got worse. And worse. And now it seems I have shingles. It sounds like some kind of disgusting STD. Shingles is basically a reoccurance of chicken pox. I so do not want to deal with this. ARGH!
Oh, my dear Persephone, I’m sorry to hear that.
I had asthma as a child, and had a near-death episode at 13. Tubes down the throat, banging on the chest, and all that lovely stuff. The asthma disappeared around 28, but I began to have panic attacks under stress. I think that they’re related, as breathing inapprapos seems to trigger it.
The last one happened last week, and it actually resulted in a minor seizure. I’ve been having minor ones for two years, and the stress brought on a more full blown one. The meds I was given made me feel like a zombie. I’m going to do without until it becomes a problem. This is a recent thing for me, but I understand what you feel. The feeling I get before that state is so weird, and detached, but the twitch thing is really bizarre. I can actually feel my brain start to seize up and “misfire”, but after this last episode, I couldn’t remember anything. Since this is a new travail for me, I don’t know if it’s considered epilepsy. And, I don’t have the insurance to delve into it. I do sympathize with you though. Bleh!