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Carport in a raging static electrical gale Road 1-A Detour From the ""Normal Life""Gentlemen, Line Up Your Cars, Start Your Engines, Green Flag, Gun Your Engines, Go!Genesis of the epilepsy, the beginning of the Electric Highway and the ups and downs of epilepsy, depression Regent Jacksonian, my first neurologist, said ""I've seen these many times before. When adolescence ends, your seizures will stop."" My seizures will stop when adolescence ends; that was seven or eight years; seven years seemed a lifetime, eight years seemed an eternity. So began the mounting frustration and exasperation. That statement has echoed in my mind during a 40-year prolonged adolescence. The brain is like a car's engine-it controls what we do and where we go and some of us have faulty electrical systems. In adolescence, testosterone shifted my brain into overdrive and flicked the seizure switch that controlled the firing of my spark plugs to the off position-it has remained there for over four decades. At the end of my sixth-grade-year during the hot summer of 1974 my engine overheated and I had two tonic-clonic-known at the time as grand mal-seizures. At the time I experienced ictal (seizure) amnesia. So began a 42-year-journey on Epilepsy's Electric Highway. The fictitiously named Regent Jacksonian died in 2007 of liver cancer.Memories of events prior to that time became vague and uncertain-except for certain notable exceptions. In third grade, my crush on Wendy-a redheaded, emerald-eyed girl-and in fourth, fifth, and sixth grades, Sarah-a sapphire-blue-eyed blonde, with perfect teeth who filled my thoughts and dreams.Double Vision in the Fun House and the Wild Carnival Ride of LifeThe first drug I was put on was Tegretol (carbamazepine), it had absolutely no effect in controlling my seizures-it gave me double vision (diplopia), and ringing in the ears (tinnitus). I was then put on Dilantin (sodium phenytoin), the third drug used to treat seizures-first-bromides, second-phenobarbital, third-Dilantin-the tonic-clonic seizures stopped. I was referred to Regent Jacksonian. They progressed to absence-then known as petit mal-and to complex-partial Epilepsy. He put me on Depakene (valproic acid), a fairly new drug at the time, it was released to the public about the time I was officially diagnosed, and Mebaral (mepho-barbital) in addition to the Dilantin. They used to use bromides for sleeping powders; it is no wonder that it turned you into a zombie.

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9781729180334

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