Living with Epilepsy

Hi, my name is Carrie and I have a childhood history of epilepsy.  I've recently been re-diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of 32.  It was quite a shock, more than I would have expected it to be, when you consider how much of a major part of my life has been impacted by this illness, how many years I've lived with it, like a shadow, following me throughout my life.  A shadow that apparently just won't go away.  I wasn't expecting it, I really thought it was a part of my past, it just didn't occur to me that I would have to re-identify myself as a person with epilepsy.  And figure out what ever that means, in my life now.  So it really did hit me far more than I expected.  Not a "same old, same old" mentality which is what I thought it would be, in the (what I thought was) unlikely event that the tests came back positive.

Boy was I wrong.

I found out on November 19, 2009--7 years after I withdrew myself from what at the time I thought were unnecessary anticonvulsant medications.  And it was hell, since one of them was a benzodiazepine, which causes physical dependence when it is used long term.  But I was determined to be medication free, and so I fought with determination to withdraw from that drug, along with the other anticonvulsant and a few other medications, even though it was sheer hell.  It took a year and a half, and was not my first withdrawal from that medicine.  It was a misery.  And yet here I am again, right back on those meds.  I can take some comfort in the fact that I gained a great deal in that 7 years.  Many necessary skills and the ability to cope, for instance.