Epilepsy in the context of ABI

Note: This post has been moved from my old Wordpress personal blog, which I don’t expect to update anymore.

The nervous system is similar to an electrical circuit. If you cut an electrical wire in a circuit, an accidental connection between two points of different potential can happen. When electrical circuits in the brain are cut due to a stroke (or a surgery, in my case), abnormal electrical activity can be generated in several parts of the brain. These kind of abnormal electrical activity episodes may appear in the form of epilepsy.

The first times I had this kind of epileptical attacks, I didn’t notice them, but my wife told me the following mornings that I had had them the night before. Later, I learned that the brain intentionally switches off when these episodes ocurrs as a defense mechanism because they are too stressful for it to be recorded.

I wasn’t very surprised when my wife told me that because, since I left the hospital, I was prescripted anti-epileptical medication, so I assumed that there was a possibility of this kind of episodes to happen. Anyway, as more episodes like that took place later, the dosis of that kind of medication was increased thrice (if I remember well). In addition, I also have a rescue medication for the specific moments when I’m having a crisis. Obviously, someone has to be with me to give me that rescue medication.

A consequence of this is that our life habits changed. Concretely, both my wife and me lost some autonomy. She has on-duty nights in the hospital, but, before all this process (if my memory doesn’t trick me) I used to carry my wife to the hospital in the morning; I could go for errands or do some running workouts during the day when she was on-duty. And, the following morning, I picked her at the hospital when she was done to bring her back home. Some days I even went to the hospital at night to stay some time and have dinner with her. During these latest months, when she had on-duty nights, my parents came the morning before to pick me at Ronda in the morning and brought me to our family home at Chiclana, and finally brought me back the day after. Don’t get me wrong, I really love my parents, but, as you can imagine, in terms of autonomy the consequences are not so good.

Now I’ve been enough time without epileptic attacks, it seems it’s OK to test reducing that medication to find the equilibrium point (especially because that medication has some secondary effects we want to avoid), so doctors are indeed trying to reduce it progressively.

Two weeks ago we also tested me staying alone all night again at home while my wife was on-duty, just like before all this process (and fortunately there were no problems). This was really a milestone for us, because we hope someday to recover all our life habits just as before.