Bear in mind that my dad has epilepsy, so it was easy for the hospital to diagnose me with epilepsy after the September seizure. People don't have grand mal seizures from hypothyroidism. However, hypothyroidism and epilepsy go hand in hand in many case studies I've read over the years. Now I've become one of those statistics. I always thought statistics were what happened to other people, and that I could play my own physician and manage my own health, primarily by reading about health and nutrition and staying in the know. Nope. I need prescription drugs.
I've been having anxiety, but can't take anxiety medication, because it interferes with the seizure medication. My anxiety has contributed to a 30 lb weight loss this winter. I went from 138 to 108 between November and March.
My brain is completely rewired now. I've lost my sense of humor and my personality, at least what I used to know it as. I've also lost some cognitive functions. The other day upon waking up, I couldn't add six plus six. It took me about 10 seconds to add it with my fingers when I finally realized I couldn't do it any other way. I've gone into sudden rages, emotional fits, panic attacks, and sheer hysteria at the drop of a dime, sometimes for no apparent reason. I cry everyday now.
I wish someone would have caught my head when I had my seizure. From what I was told, people around me just watched me walk around blabbing verbal nonsense, until I started bashing my head against the wall and floor, at which point someone dialed 911. I don't know how people can just sit and watch someone break their brain and do nothing. No one in an office full of people even thought to cradle my head. Maybe they were afraid. Afraid of the noises I was making, and possibly of other things coming out of my body. I was more alone that day in a room full of friends than I am now in a town full of trees.
There's no going back now. No going back to the normal I used to know.
I did try to refuse the seizure medication for a couple months after being released from my 4 day hospital stay. I googled "Seizure Triggers" and decided I could avoid alcohol, stress, flashing lights, sunlight, and caffeine, and decrease my chances of having another seizure. However, I couldn't avoid other triggers, like food sensitivities (I think sugar and MSG are a couple), chemicals in dry erase markers and cleaners (which have made me pass out in the past), my period (hormonal imbalances), and missed medication (well, I was refusing to take medication), and I kept getting funny feelings, about once a week, and I knew my head wasn't right. I didn't feel like myself. Within a couple months I noticed myself feeling detached and depressed and eventually anxious and suicidal. I fainted a few times, and also woke up from seizures in my sleep. I decided to take a short medical leave from work between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and start taking the seizure medication. It made me extremely tired. I wasn't able to drive and I could barely go up and down the stairs in my apartment building. I was slurring my speech, and feeling nauseous when I ate. I became increasingly sensitive to sunlight, too. The future began to look as dim and bleak as the 4 pm. winter sunsets.
My landlord was nervous about me living on the third floor. The walls were A-frame and it was hard to even stand up all the way in my room or the kitchen or bathroom. I'd hit my head several times while contorting my body to get into the shower, and he knew this. He's actually fixing the apartment now, at least that's what he told me after I moved out.
He was Indian man #1, who I'd met on Match.com a year earlier. He helped me out when I needed a place to stay, but it wasn't safe for me to be there any longer, and he and I both knew that.
I'm home living with my parents now, since I can't function like I used to. It isn't so bad, but I worry about how I'll ever redefine normal, or fit into any mold that society finds acceptable.
My TSH reading was .02 after my blood-work drawn this April. It explained the anxiety I was feeling, and the heart palpitations I was having this winter. My TSH reading in 2011 was over 400, which was indicative of a sluggish, under-active thyroid. I used to be very slow and dull. Non-emotional. Non-feeling. Non-caring. I liked me better that way. Nothing got to me.
Now I'm on the other end of the spectrum, completely. It's uncharted territory for me, these waters, these feelings. I wish they'd go away.
I've had a Murphy's law sort of year this 2016, set into motion by banging my head 8 months ago. Makes me wonder if that's why heavy metal fans are so dumb. Our brains aren't meant to be shaken around.
I saw a Reiki energy healer lady last week. She lives and practices her healing art in Long Lake, NY. I don't know that my parents approve, since my dad pastors a Christian church, and this lady was into new age stuff, but whatev. I'm desperate to try anything, I told myself. I'm sick of going to sleep wondering if I'll wake up in a cold pool of sweat, or wake up at all, or what kind of night terror I'll have. I've experienced such strangeness lately. Strange tastes and sensations in my mouth and in my mind, even a physical squishiness in my brain. I'm a writer and I have no words to really describe it. I've been drifting in and out of consciousness daily and nightly, hours and days meshing into one another like braided sets of ropes twisted into knots. I don't really know who I am anymore.
The Reiki energy healer lady was
amazing, though. She gave me hope. Told me in the beginning of our
meeting, not knowing anything about me other than my first name, and that I was pissed that her office was hard to find, that her hair was standing up all over her body, and that
"Spirit" told her I was supposed to be a ghost writer. I told her there
was no way I was into writing ghost stories. But then she explained what
ghost writing was, and what kind of money her ghost writer friend made
per book, and she seemed willing to help me with networking. So there's
that, maybe.
She also talked to me about energy spirals and something about the word tork or torque, I don't know. I looked it up but it's all too Sheldon Cooper for me. Then she had me lie down on a raised bed, placed some crystals by my head, and covered me with something a soft as a mouse's belly. She began a dance, which I could only imagine behind my closed eyelids, as she blew air audibly all around the room and snapped her fingers at the air beside me, circling my body, and sometimes lightly touching and talking to it. She reminded me a couple times to breathe a certain way and to flex my toes. I obeyed. Maybe it helped. Maybe it did something. Who knows. It cost $95 so I hope so.
