Unfortunately, my streak of fifteen years seizure-free ended earlier this year. I started having small seizures in college that were misdiagnosed as icepick migraine headaches, which meant I didn’t receive treatment for epilepsy until I was having blackouts a year after graduation.
On July 9th, I had three seizures that were smaller versions of the ones in college. (I’m pretty sure these weren’t icepick migraines, either.) So now the doctor and I are making adjustments to the medications I’ve been taking for a decade and a half, which makes sense. Over time, our bodies get acclimated to the treatment and it doesn’t work as well. It’s the same reason why I started having seizures in college: I started taking Dilantin in 9th grade and its effectiveness decreased through high school and college. The plan this time was to increase the dosage of one (Lamictal) and maintain the other (Depakote). The plan is already not working.
I imagine this is a situation a lot of other people with epilepsy have gone through: a change in medication that should have worked—it was a great plan on paper—and it made the problem worse. The seizures haven’t been as strong, but they’ve been much more frequent. Every few days instead of every few months. Which raises the best question in the world (even better than “Does this make me look fat?”): What now?
