Hello, and welcome to Seize the Day. We are Adam and Laylan, a twentysomething couple living in the Midwest. We have started this blog to attempt to chronicle and unravel the mystery of Adam's epilepsy which he has had since he was sixteen years old. To have a full view of where we are today, we should go back to the beginning...
Adam is the youngest of four children born to a college professor father and a music teacher mother. On June 2, 1994, a dump truck collided with their car on the passenger side. Adam's mother passed away instantly, and Adam was trapped in the mangled car as he was sitting behind her. He was in a coma for five days and was diagnosed with a Traumatic Brain Injury. As he was only eleven years old, no one was sure the impact that this injury would have on his life.
When Adam was 16, he experienced his first seizure. His seizures vary from mild to severe and are classified as post-traumatic stress, clonic seizures. (I've seen them also called grand mal seizures, but I don't think he fits that completely) Adam is 100% conscious during the seizures, but has jerky convulsions, "lightning bolt" pain, headaches, and his body temperature rises. They can last anywhere from 3-20 minutes. We treat them with cool air, cold washcloths and breathing exercises.
When I met Adam in 2009, he was having seizures weekly. He was also smoking cigarettes and drinking beer nightly (it was summer!). As we started dating, both of these behaviors decreased, and so did his seizures. I also read online that potassium helps with seizures so we introduced potassium supplements to his daily pill regimen along with Carbamazepine and Zonegran. These lifestyle changes have attributed to a reduction of the seizures to only about one per month or less. (For awhile we were six plus months seizure free!)
Sometimes, Adam has seizures and we can identify the trigger. It can often be cigarette smoking or drinking if he's gone out with friends. It could be if he's eaten too much and his stomach isn't feeling well. It could be being jarred from a dream. But other times, there is no trigger that we can identify... which is why we've started this blog. We hope that we can chronicle and reach out to the traumatic brain injury and epilepsy community to share questions, praises, triggers, and solutions. I've been so frustrated with the lack of information related to seizures and TBI's online- I hope that we can bridge the gap together!
I hope you'll join us for this journey- I dream of the day that Adam can go years seizure-free.
