Cathy the Librarian

This morning I had a dizzy spell of some sort. I don’t think it was your run of the mill dizzy spell, but I don’t want it to be something more than just regular dizziness. I sort of felt the blood drain out of my face and while it wasn’t like the aura visions that I had been before my seizure, it wasn’t like a regular feeling of dizziness. Of course, I tried to make it go away, because I didn’t want anything to be wrong. Unfortunately, I don’t really know exactly what happened.
If you are one of the five people that read my blog, you will understand my concern. If you just happened to stumble upon my blog and are wondering “What the hell is she going on about?” let me explain.

January 1st of this year, I was enjoying dinner with my hubby, my second set of parents (err… in-laws) and my son. All of a sudden, my mother-in-law noticed my face had gone all funny. I then started shaking and doing all sorts of strange things. Of course, I heard all of this second hand because I wasn’t there at the time. That’s right, I don’t remember a thing. It was like my brain just went on a mini vacation.. in a blender. What I had was a grand-mal seizure. (I did NOT lose bladder control thank god).

I went to see the neurologist and as we talked, I realized that for the past year, my brain had been working itself up to the seizure. I was having seizure auras, which caused me to have a strange sense of deja vu. I would have these at the strangest times, sitting eating dinner, at the end of the summer reading program pizza party, typing on the computer, going to the loo. There really didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason. All I understood was that they were happening too much and freaking me out. Unfortunately I didn’t realize until after the seizure what was going on.

The doctor then told me that there really weren’t any outside factors that had caused my seizure. Turns out (as my mom finally decided to tell me the day before) that my father and his mom both had seizures. Therefor I can blame it all on genetics. Which doesn’t really make me feel any better, but I know why it happened.

So now I’m on medicine called Lamictal (which also treats bipolar disorder). They slowly increased it, and at one point I was taking 200 mg (?) a day, but then I broke out in a rash, which if it goes on too long, can send you to the hospital. So then I had to start all over slowly. There are quite a few side effects, and I’m pretty sure that I have a couple of them: dizziness, headaches, blurry vision. Before the seizure, I actually had very few headaches. Now my head never feels like its screwed on just right. I sort of feel like the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. Stuff just keeps falling out of me. Plus I’m pretty paranoid about every strange feeling going on in my brain. Of course I don’t usually want to tell anyone about it because I don’t want to cause trouble, and I really hate being a burden, since of course:
I can’t drive. I can’t drive until I’ve been on the medicine for six months. If I hadn’t gone on the medicine, I’d have to wait a year before I could drive. Granted, I don’t want to have a seizure while in the car, because I could kill someone. I also hate being such a burden on people.

Next Wednesday I have an appointment with the Neurologist. On the one hand, I don’t want to tell her that I had a strange dizzy spell. But, on the other hand, I don’t want to have another seizure. I don’t want anything to be wrong with me, if we’re going to be honest, but since its too late for that, I just want to be healthy enough to enjoy being with my son and husband. Plus I’d like to start in on making another baby, and I don’t want to be a wreck for that. My neurologist says that its okay to have babies while on lamictal, but upon looking at side effects and such, its not very comforting. I’d like to have one more kid, but I don’t want him/her to have health problems because of me.

My mind has been pretty crazy lately, but it feels good to get all this out. I really wish that I could be “normal” in any sense of the word, but it looks as though I’m destined to something different.

Oh dear, and I have to be at work tomorrow. I was going to try and get there at nine in the morning, but now I’m thinking that I’ll just take some cataloges home and go through them for an hour after work… a librarian and her cataloges are never parted, although I wish we were, because I’m afraid a stack of them are going to cave in on me and kill me.

And now for something completely different! One of my co-workers has been crocheting purses. If you know ANYTHING about me, you know that I absolutely LOVE purses. I love these purses that she’s been making, and I know for a fact that she sells them, but for some reason, she won’t sell them to her co-workers. She’s just evil!
I tried to find a pattern that looked similar, and this is the closest I could find – here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here plus directions on how to make it here. Well anyway, you get the picture. If you google buttonhole bag, you get pages and pages, and they’re all cute.

Hmm. For a minute it made me forget how sucky it is to have had a seizure. I love bags. (Don’t tease Jeff. I know you’re going to read this. You just don’t understand. You’re a guy.)

This entry was posted on Friday, June 2nd, 2006 at 11:17 pm and is filed under Health, or not so healthy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.