"This is good news"?!

After my friends all said to keep harassing the neuro's office until I got a response, I called again on Monday and had an appointment for Thursday. Finally!

The neuro said that it's "good news" that I had the full seizures. I said, "how is it good news?!" and he said because now we know for sure what is going on, and that we're on the right track. Before this, he was just going by my descriptions of what I was experiencing and feeling; since my tests showed nothing and the doctors hadn't witnessed anything, they had no solid evidence that it really was partial seizures. Now we know.

I asked why the meds didn't prevent the progression, as I thought they were supposed to. He said my dosage was still too low. We had originally started with quite a low dose (which I knew) and were in the middle of increasing when the seizures happened. So it's going up again. I'm not yet at the max allowed dosage for my meds and since I'm tolerating them well (no bad side effects), we'll keep with it until either it works or we hit the max and have to try something else.

No driving until at least September. He said 6 months seizure-free and I protested because the ICBC website says 3 months if it's your first time having seizures. He said that technically the partials count (which means I was lucky to be driving that whole time anyway). But he also said we can re-assess in September and see how things are going. I miss my car and it does make my life more difficult, but if it does turn into 6 months it's not the end of the world.

Overall, he seems confident that we will sort it out and that it will be manageable. He said I'm going to be ok. I needed to hear that.

People keep asking how I feel, and I don't really know how to answer because it cycles so much. Some weeks I feel fine, and other weeks I don't. This week was fine, but next week will be 4 weeks from the big ones, and I tend to be in a 4 week cycle so it's possible that I will see increased activity next week. We'll see. I'm still exhausted all the time. This is partly due to med increases and partly because life is draining right now, so I'm focusing a lot on rest and self-care. Less caffeine, more naps, lavender on my pillows, that sort of thing. :)

Onward!