Personal Experience: Submitted 2/13/2005

I was diagnosed with epilepsy following a car accident on July 16, 1984. My first two seizures were grand mal. From there they changed to complex partial. Eventually the seizures got so out of hand I had to have surgery to get them stopped. I had the surgery on December 10, 1993. I have been seizure-free for 7 1/2 years now. That's the longest I've been seizure-free in the past 20 1/2. I think my surgery was a great success. I can say with all the honesty I have in me I was not scared to have the surgery. I knew it had to be done if I wanted to get any relief from my seizures. I was given all the available medicines to treat complex partial seizures. I was in a drug study program for Vigabatrin. That was not helping. It was at that point my neurologist said we needed to consider surgery. I could see he was just as disappointed and frustrated as I was.

I was tested for a year prior to my surgery. I had the WADA test, vision field testing, neuropsychological testing, an EEG, an MRI, and a SPECT scan. To find my seizure focus, I had depth electrodes put into my cheeks and was hooked up to an EEG. That showed that my seizure focus was on the middle of the hippocampus on the right temporal lobe. The neurologist said that's one of the most easily accessible areas of the brain.

I had a very hard time with the side effects. When I took Dilantin, my gums were badly swollen. On Depakene, I had some trouble with nausea and vomitting. I felt miserable when I took Celontin. I had an extremely hard time with the vomitting. I could not keep down anything I ate. The only things I was able to keep down were bread, cheese, poached eggs, and pudding. I had a hard time on Tegretol. I felt doped out of my mind half the time. It also caused me to become extremely anemic. My WBC dropped down to 1. The normal count should be up around 5. When I took Depakote, that put about 25, almost 30 pounds on me. It also caused my platelet coult to drop dangerously low. My platelet count dropped down to 75 or 78 (I can't remember which). The normal count should be up around 100. The two medicines I take now, Neurontin and Lamictal, are the only two to which I have not reacted violently.

-Anonymous