EPILEPSY: Keep Taking The Tablets

Don't Say Brainstorm - An occasional chat about Epilepsy...

"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" "You ask a glass of water..." - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

I’ve recently had a change in medication again, and it’s not the smoothest transition.

It has the effect of making me exhausted.  Absolutely shattered.  The dreams I have are more surreal than they used to be but seem much more real.  It’s just a matter of time, waiting for the body to adjust to this new medication, and things will get back to normal – but just waiting for normal service to be resumed can seem like hard work in itself.  First world problem I know – a self-indulgent complaint from the well fed with free access to drugs – but apparently I seem slightly drunk because I’m running a bit slower than usual, and seeming drunk at 9am is bad for my reputation.  I suppose you could say it's like being drunk with all the fun taken out of it.

Of course I’m not really complaining – well, maybe just a bit, but the bottom line is always going to be that if something is going to reduce my chances of having fits then I’m all for it.  Daily medication is a fact of life for many people in the world, millions of epilepsy sufferers and many more millions who have other illnesses.  I am sure that the vast majority of people would say that the good that their drugs do far outweighs the bad.

Medication has been a presence for every day of my adult life, and a few days of my adolescence for good measure.  Has it changed me?  How would I know?  Put very simplistically, the medications I have been on slow down or dull the brain to reduce the chances of seizures.  So is the version of me I have lived with for half of my life a slowed down and dulled version of some other possible me?  If I didn’t have to take these drugs would I be quicker on the uptake, wittier, more creative and ambitious?  (How could I be wittier?) And would I like this alternative, drug-free me more or less?  I don’t mean to suggest I would be completely different; however, if I hadn’t been on medication for the last 15 years I would be at the very least a slightly different person because I would have had an entirely different experience of life.

Being on medication means taking responsibility for your own condition – making sure you have enough drugs stocked up, enough with you when going away somewhere and remembering to take them.  This is true whether you are well equipped for such responsibility or not.  As an irresponsible young male, I think I did relatively well at organising this side of my life.  There have been very few occasions when I forgot to take my pills, and those times that I did taught me the hard way to have a better memory.  In a way it provided, and still provides, a form of structure, a ritual that bookends the day. 

There are so many different types of pills to be on for epilepsy. 

There are over 20 types of drugs for epilepsy.
Incidentally, my table is littered with blister packs such as these...

Sodium Valproate is one of the most common, and the first type that I was on.  It was moderately successful, in that the seizures were drastically reduced; but the aim is to cut out fits entirely, and I have had at least one fit every year that I have been diagnosed.  After moving to a combination of Lamotrigine and Levitiracetam 5 years ago the fits reduced further, but after a spate of seizures last Christmas a third drug, Carbmazepine, has been added – which is where you came in.  These tweaks in medication are always discussed with the consultants I have seen, and my attitude has generally been ‘why not?’  Despite my griping about the initial effects of this new drug I’m very pro-medication, and am thankful to live in a time when medicine exists at the level of sophistication it does now.  Having epilepsy in the middle-ages would have sucked.  At best you would get some Valerian root to chew on; at worst given up on as a lost cause, and left to convulse as and when you pleased.

There can be a stigma about medication.  Some people who are prescribed medication don’t want it, perhaps because they themselves see it as a stigma.  I have heard an account of someone who didn’t want to go to a doctor or get medication for their seizures because they thought they might lose their job.  The person in this account was a lorry driver.  This kind of thing is why I am pro-medication (and educating people about the condition).  Though sympathetic to that person’s situation that is undeniably irresponsible behaviour, putting the sufferer’s life and the lives of others at risk.  If people were more informed about epilepsy that individual might not have had to feel forced into neglecting his condition.  As it turned out the seizures in this case were mild, were controlled by medication, and the job was kept.

In the 21^st century the medication we have helps people with a condition like epilepsy live healthy and (relatively) normal lives.  Pharmaceutical drugs should be embraced.  For a short period of time I may not enjoy the fact my new medication has sapped some of my energy – but I know that in the long run it gives me a chance to have a life like other people, which is something that everyone should be entitled to.  Generally speaking, were I to avoid taking medication not only would I be failing to confront reality but I would be denying myself that basic right. 

Maybe if I hadn’t been on medication since this whole epilepsy thing started I would have been a different person (for better or worse); but either way I would have been a person that lived in fear of a treatable medical condition ruining everything – probably with strong justification.  Ultimately, I am a better person for feeling safe and independent, and feeling exhausted for a few days is a small price to pay for that.

For more information about epilepsy contact the Epilepsy Society and Epilepsy Action