I was contacted a while ago by a lovely lady from Healthline who had visited my site and directed me to a new infographic that their site had put up she thought I might be interested in.

I’ll bite.

This is the perfect time of year to be talking about how epilepsy effects the body. Especially since I am coming up on the 1 year anniversary of becoming a cyborg.

While reading the article associated with it (You should actually read it because there’s hoverlinks and a lot more background info) I found myself nodding a lot and saying, “Yup, I definitely do that!.” Which is why I wanted to share it with you folks in down-to-earth language that we all could understand.

Let’s start from the top.

Epilepsy Fucks You Up in the Head
There are different kinds of seizures a person can have, some causing you to lose consciousnesses and some not. You may be left in that postical state, AKA “WTF happened and why am I so exhausted? And why does my wrist hurt?” Rapid eye movement or staring, very awesome during Halloween, but at other times just unsettling can also be a sign of either having a small seizure or the onset of one. Auras or headaches can be a good tell-tale of the onset of a seizure. Unfortunately they also can come at the tail-end so you can get shafted at both ends. I’m an odd-ball as I have synesthesia disorder as well which is a neurological misfire that exacerbates the whole aura shit. It also causes aural, olfactory and gustatory perception scrambles. Some people call this a phenomenon. I call those people assholes.  It’s probably related to my epilepsy. I’m not a doctor. Don’t quote me on that. They also knock you out. Imagine doing 8 hours of college studying in 30 seconds. All that physical exertion and stress on the body is like running a double marathon. Plus, if you’ve added any anticonvulsant meds to the mix, you’ve tripled that shit. You just want to sleep for three days.

Depression is next, but I want to leave that for another article. I have plans for a whole article about how depression sucks and disproportionately effects those with disabilities. It sucks and for those with epilepsy, living with this disorder can be very isolating.

Epilepsy Fucks You Up in the Body
Epilepsy can fuck with your breathing and your heart. It’s really important for everything, but especially for people who are medically vulnerable to get regular check-ups and to be checked out by a doctor if they notice anything amiss. What might be normal to any normie, might not be normal to a Twitch like me. I have a ridiculously low heart rate to begin with so even things like getting what is probably a seasonal cold needs to get checked out. It could be pertussis, could be bronchitis or pneumonia. Epilepsy is considered an autoimmune disorder. And when I have that and Raynaud’s, and various food allergies, am I allowed to say that I have like 4 autoimmune disorders? I’m like uber-vulnerable to the change of the seasons. Loss of muscle tone and uncontrolled bowels. I mentioned this before. Shit happen. Some types of seizures can cause spasming of muscles tightening or relaxing which can cause muscle strain, falling down and cracking your head open or wetting your pants. You can also break your teeth from clenching or grinding, scratch yourself, bit your lip/tongue/cheek, break your arms, legs etc. Every time I go to the dentist it’s generally to get cracks filled from this type of issue.

The scream. Believe it or not, while not howling and bellowing, I mew. Well, it’s more like a “hmm” I guess. It’s what I’ve been told, because I don’t notice that I do it. I’m told that I make questioning humming, clicking noises and bob my head to the side inquisitively, pre-seizurey. Sometimes it never results in a seizure. It’s just a little tick. I also have myoclonic spasms, so there’s that.

And pregnancy. I was all, say what? Concerned that I would burst into spontaneous Immaculate Conception the next time I had a seizure, I needed to read further into their page to see what they meant. I jest, though. This was something I knew about for a long time and something I had researched thoroughly. First of all, I want to say that it is absolutely possible to have a healthy, happy baby just because your have epilepsy or a seizure disorder. Second of all, I’m not a doctor and that’s something that you should talk with your doctor with before actually getting down to the dirty. For a long time in my life, I knew that I was not a great candidate for having the little ones. At least not biologically. If I ever, for whatever reason change my mind – it would be a very conscious one. . . because I would have to go ransom it from gypsies or layaway from Ikea. That’s how you do it, right? 

First, I’m on a lot of really horrific chemicals. Medications that I would have to change or discontinue to be able to grow something inside of me without risk of complications like three-eyes or no asshole. (Sometimes not everybody poops.) That would significantly raise my risk of seizures which would then lower their survival risk. That, my friend is the definition of a Catch-22. (Don’t quote me on that. I just make this shit up.) Then, I also am riddled with cysts. Ovarian ones, uterine ones, that weird lump they took off my foot back in winter of 2012, so it really wasn’t looking that positive for me. I also had a huge golfball lump in my right tit, but that was pre-blog. And, non-cancerous. Also, not mastitis. I got to do a 3 core biopsies, though. Because I’m a masochist. I was a great candidate to just close that shit down.

After a very candid conversation with my ‘Lady Parts Doctor‘ (who also happened to be a woman) we decided that the best course of action would be to proceed with a sorta non-invasive, irreversible, Adiana procedure, which are little silicone pellets about the size of a grain of rice which they shove in each Fallopian tube as well as the Novasure endometrial ablation. The latter was the most important due to the fact I suffered from uncontrollable and painful lady issues. (Which is the nice way of saying I hemorrhaged for seven days straight every twenty-five days, which made me terribly anemic and very sick.) It basically consists of lazering off the uterine lining so nothing can stick to it. Of course there is a risk of an egg sticking to the fallopian tubes, which is why you pair it with the Adiana procedure. Just to make sure the job is done. I knocked this shit out back in December 2011. They had me come back 6 months later to make sure I was closed for business. I apologize if you don’t think that picture is work safe. It is indeed an x-ray of my junk filled with contrast dye. They pumped it in to ensure that it wouldn’t make it past the barriers. NONE SHALL PASS! I got a print-out after I promised I wouldn’t post it on Facebook.

Suckers.