Artificial Sweeteners

I've been thinking recently about artificial sweeteners (Equal, Sweet 'N Low, Splenda, etc.) and how, if at all, such chemicals might interact with the brain as it relates to seizures. I remember years ago that people claimed there were links (spurious ones?) between Nutrasweet (Equal?) and an increased frequency in epileptic episodes.
Personally, I don't know if I subscribe to these theories (I certainly don't know if I view them as facts, but...), as I am a frequent imbiber of Diet Coke, and I have Splenda with my coffee every day (sometimes 2 coffees or more, depending!).
It has always been said that the cause of seizures can be multifactorial - alcohol, dehydration, exhaustion, stress, a good whack on the noggin - etc. But do things like diet, particularly when it comes to chemicals like artificial sweeteners, play a role? A small number of people out there have stated that ketogenic diets have shown success, but there is so little consensus amongst all the experts in the fields and the empirical data available.
Just my rambling thoughts for the day. Still sick, but on the mend.

Sick...

My wonderful fiancee has given me a gift that feels like it will never stop giving. Her cold. Starting on Saturday, I began showing symptoms of her head and chest cold, and yesterday we had a drive scheduled up to upstate NY and MA to have our food testing and check-in at the wedding location to continue our work on determining scheduling and flow. I somehow made it through a 3 hour trip up and another one back, but between sweating and coughing and generally feeling exhausted, I am in a world of stuff this morning. The cough feels awful, my throat is raw and irritated, and I have the energy of a AAA battery sold at a flea market, which is to say not a whole lot!
Past history has shown that mixing night-time cold medicines such as NyQuil or Tylenol Cold & Flu seem to give me an increased susceptibility to having a seizure, so I am only taking the daytime stuff. One wonders if I had taken some night-time meds last night might I possibly be feeling better today and NOT have seized. Ugh.
Despite all of this, she has (as always) been a rock in taking care of me, and I love her all the more for it.
Knock on wood this thing gets the flock out of my system sooner rather than later!
Ugh.

Disappointed

Last night I went out with the gang from work (again) and got blitzed (again). For whatever reason, I have (over the last month or two) gone out several times with the guys from work and gotten really waster - too much alcohol. WAY too much alcohol. On one occasion this may have contributed to a seizure, I don't know. I don't really want to speculate. But I do want to nip this in the bud. It is not fair to myself or my doctors who are working hard to find a balance of medications that will bring the epilepsy under control ("don't mix with alcohol" on the label, and my doctor's concerns that I really shouldn't be drinking on this medication in general). But most of all, it is not fair to Mary. She doesn't deserve to have a drunken idiot coming home reeking of alcohol, worried that she might again be woken up in the middle of the night to my seizing. If I can't do this for myself, I damn well better do it for her. I love her more than anything, and I would do anything for her. I will do this for her.

Facebook connections

Out of the blue this morning, I get an email from an old friend asking me why I had posted an article on Facebook about Epilepsy, and did I have Epilepsy. She went on to tell me that her 5 year old son does.
Now this is someone who I was friends with in High School, but am now just Facebook friends with, really. But what struck me is how Social Media are enabling people to find more and more people dealing with similar issues. 7 or 8 years ago, I would have told you that I knew of one, maybe two other people with Epilepsy. Since the advent of Social Media (and granted, the more attention Epilepsy has received), I have come to know more and more people whose lives have been affected by this condition.
I remember hearing the statistics "1 out of every 100 people has some form of epilepsy," but never being able to believe it. I knew hundreds of people - friends, acquaintances, family - through work, socializing, online... I only knew about one of my father's friends and a woman I knew from the bar. Three of us.
no longer.
On a separate note, today is the day I go up to 500mg of Primidone (Mysoline) - we'll see how this works for me, but I am keeping optimistic and hopeful that "this time" we have found the right balance of medications.
And Good Luck to you and your son, Jenn!

The bear

So Mary wakes me up at about 6:30 this morning and asks if I'd like an extra 10 minutes of sleep. Apparently I am a bear and did not notice the alarm go off at 6am, the snooze at 6:09, or the second snooze at 6:18. This is, of course, not news. I have always been a VERY heavy sleeper!
Mary is convinced that if it (the alarm) went on long enough, I would hear it and wake up.
But I wonder if I am going into a "deeper" sleep from the barbiturates, and whether I am (in fact) getting worse...
Zzzzzzzz......
Zzzzzzzz......
Zzzzzzzz......
Ugh.

Football

Well I was born a Washington Redskins fan, but today I became a HUGE fan of the Atlanta Falcons, in particular of their RB Jason Snelling:
http://epilepsyfoundation.org/knowthedifference/media.html
Anytime I see celebrities speak out on this issue, I become particularly enamored of them. Seeing the Axelrods on 60 minutes a while back and their founding of CURE really overwhelmed me, and this small public service announcement makes me very happy. It's great that more and more people seem to be bringing Epilepsy into the forefront of conversations.

I now have a new goal:
I will make it through the coming weeks leading up to the wedding, the wedding weekend (Sept. 25th), and my entire honeymoon SEIZURE FREE.
Rock my world, Primidone and Trileptal!

Crappy birthday present

So today is my mother's birthday. What a wonderful present to give her, calling up and saying "hey mom, had another couple of seizures last night." Blech. Been a month since I had one and the doctor put me up to 150mg BID of the Primidone. I saw him on Monday for a brief checkup and he took blood, the initial results of which combined with last night's episode have caused him to go up to 200mg BID for the next week and then finally 250mg BID after that. He was initially going to try and move me up to 250mg BID anyway, so I guess it is not that much of a big deal. Still, I hate dealing with the constant changes in my medication schedules and make-up.
Interestingly enough, it is also about one month since my last seizure, give or take a day. What a wonderful one-month anniversary present.
One day, Greg... One day...
Bottom line, though, is having Mary just makes everything so much easier. Less than two months to our wedding day. What a wonderful present it would be to give her, if I could say "no more milkshakes for the rest of our life together."
(I make great milk"shakes" - ha ha)