Alyssium

I've been on several other healthboards topics but for some reason, I haven't yet spoke on this one until now. Fear maybe. Well here is my story.

When I was seventeen I lost my temper at someguy at school and several minutes later, I woke up on the ground with a bad headache and confusion from h#!!. I was not diagnosed with anything then. A few months later I went to the Navy to be able to go to College someday. Well I was there for around 38 hours before they let us go to sleep. It wasn't an hour or so after falling a sleep I had what I finally was told was a grand-mal seizure. In the next 3 days I had a total of 7-8 seizures. All from the stress and lack of sleep. One I was carrying the flag up stairs and had one at the top and fell all the way down the stairs. That was when they decided to send me home. They said they don't allow any seizures disorders in the military. So after 3 grueling weeks of waiting for the paperwork to go through I went home. I say grueling because, while I was there they had me on 300mg of Dilantin a day, which was a drugged sleepy state, which I hate feeling drugged.

After I came home I had to learn how to live knowing I was now deseased and had no future, so after a while I entered a huge depression. After about 6 months I tried to kill myself, with all things I tried overdosing on Dilantin, well no one told me that it was that slow. After ingesting a whole bottle of pills, I thought it wasn't going to work, so I went on like everything was okay. That is until the next day I had a seizure from a bladder and kidney infection which sent me to the ER,(I was in public) there they checked my dilantin level. SO needless to say I was there having to drink charcoal and throwing up for a few days.

After that one of my friends told me about Vocational Rehab, that the often pay for people with disabilities tuition to college. I qualified and hear I am today almost 5 years later at 22 married with a 2 year old son attending my Senior year at College in Counseling, and will start my Master's in the fall. My seizures are controlled through sleep, exercise and diet. And I don't need any medication. I quit taking it after that incident, it didn't help me anyway.

My epilepsy is somewhat hereditary, my grandfather was diagnosed through a EEG although he never had seizures that anyone saw, my cousins had both grand mal and petit mal when they were teenagers, my mother has had 2 in her life but she is not diagnosed. Mine could be a lot worse, I haven't had one in over 8 months, and one before that was almost a year.

Anyways that's me sorry it so long, but I figured you all need to know about me in case I post.

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SweetAlyssium