[MrFedUp]

So after 2 years of severe brain fog , feeing spaced out drunk and drugged I went for an EEG of my brain and had the results letter today ... but I don't understand what it's saying ?

"The EEG performed showed occasional minor slow wave irregularity, which are diagnostically none specific. No inter-ictal eplieptiform discharges are seen in this recording.

The expert advise if clinical suspicion of Eplispsy persists we may need to arrange a sleep deprived EEG."

No one has ever mentioned epilepsy to me and I've never had a seizure so where the hell has that come from ?!

Any idea what this letter means ?

 

[Crypticall]

Could be nothing, try not to overthink it.

I have the same spaced out feeling and my EEG came back normal.

 

[forestx5]

Never had a seizure? I'm willing to bet you don't know what a seizure is, and wouldn't know one if you had it. If I'm correct, then you would be like me. I had seizures for 30 years without knowing it. I thought they were panic attacks, or anxiety attacks. But I will never forget how it started with something I would identify decades later as an abdominal aura/epigastric aura. There could be no mistaking those symptoms, which are a mild seizure that precedes a full blown temporal lobe seizure. You don't have to lose consciousness and foam at your mouth to have suffered a seizure. The person beside you could have a seizure and you might not even notice. Absence seizures can appear as a simple episode of daydreaming. My EEG showed significant pathology in my temporal lobe suggesting I had a history of seizure. No interictal epileptiform discharges simply means the EEG did not detect activity indicating a seizure had occurred during the EEG. The clinical suspicion of epilepsy may come from your general symptoms, or the letter is inaccurate to say that slow wave irregularity is not suggestive of a possible seizure disorder. A sleep deprived EEG would seek to stress your brain out and cause a seizure so that it could be detected. A time study EEG might cover a 2 day period hoping to detect epileptiform (spike) activity in your brain.

 

[MrFedUp]

Never had a seizure? I'm willing to bet you don't know what a seizure is, and wouldn't know one if you had it. If I'm correct, then you would be like me. I had seizures for 30 years without knowing it. I thought they were panic attacks, or anxiety attacks. But I will never forget how it started with something I would identify decades later as an abdominal aura/epigastric aura. There could be no mistaking those symptoms, which are a mild seizure that precedes a full blown temporal lobe seizure. You don't have to lose consciousness and foam at your mouth to have suffered a seizure. The person beside you could have a seizure and you might not even notice. Absence seizures can appear as a simple episode of daydreaming. My EEG showed significant pathology in my temporal lobe suggesting I had a history of seizure. No interictal epileptiform discharges simply means the EEG did not detect activity indicating a seizure had occurred during the EEG. The clinical suspicion of epilepsy may come from your general symptoms, or the letter is inaccurate to say that slow wave irregularity is not suggestive of a possible seizure disorder. A sleep deprived EEG would seek to stress your brain out and cause a seizure so that it could be detected. A time study EEG might cover a 2 day period hoping to detect epileptiform (spike) activity in your brain.

That was a good read, Thankyou Forest , I am currently having CBT for DP/DR and so now this letter has reversed everything I have been doing " if clinical suspicion of epilepsy continues".

Can you just have occasional and slow brain waves due to suffering DP/DR. I mean is one of the causes of DP/DR a slow brain wave ?

Last question, if I do miraculously get diagnosed with mild epilepsy would I still be able to drive ?!

 

[forestx5]

Last first - laws may very, but I believe it is fairly consistent to prohibit epileptics from driving for a period of 6 months following a seizure. If medication halts the seizures, then you are back on the road.

I recall that my EEG had significant and persistent slow delta waves, which I was informed can be suggestive of a seizure disorder. I don't know if slow brain waves are a clinical manifestation of dp/dr, but I experienced

a period of post ictal psychosis following my 1st seizure at age 17. The DR cleared up in a few months, but the DP remained for the duration. I also acquired an affective disorder of major depression and would experience

4 horrid episodes in my lifetime which featured long periods of insomnia and heavy anxiety. They were epic struggles for survival and each would be of 18 months or more duration..

Slow brain waves are deemed "diagnostically non specific" only because science doesn't know how or why. Someday it might. Don't wait for that, however. I waited 40 years and saw no significant progress

in that area. I sorted myself out by reading British Neurological Journals and texts that I somehow discovered on-line. I found a case history that matched my experience very closely. Naturally, it was "a worst case scenario".

It was an amazing thing to solve the riddle of my mental illness. For that same reason, you might be empowered with a diagnosis of mild epilepsy, but that isn't something to wish for either. Many epileptics prefer the seizures

over the treatments of today. I had ECT in 2013, and it really was a game changer. My symptoms have actually improved with time. I don't take anti seizure meds, and I no longer suffer seizures. I guess my advice would

be to complete your neurological investigation and take whatever help is available, but to rely significantly on your own resolve and the knowledge that things can and will improve if you stay the course.

 

[forestx5]

They say that correlation is not necessarily causation. If you are symptomatic and have abnormality on your EEG, it stands to reason that the two might be connected.

I don't have the answers, and I'm reasonably sure that neurology doesn't have them either. 40 years ago, a neurologist told me "we (neurologists) have bigger fish to fry".

Here is my cynical analysis of that statement. Neurologists pay big $$ for their training and education. Too many neurologists would lower prices and hurt the market. Triage is the

process of assigning priority in the treatment of illness. Therefore, Neurology doesn't have time for you. See a psychiatrist, and make sure to tell him I sent you

so I can collect a referral fee.

 

[forestx5]

I'm just glad I found the resources on the internet to diagnose myself. I'm sure most everyone could identify a case history that matched their own experiences and symptoms. If it meant finding a diagnosis, cure or treatment for their condition, they would never tire of looking.

I'm not even sure I could find that information again. It might be behind a firewall by now. And that's another thing. This is their business and they are coldhearted about it. The medical community exerts proprietary control over medical information.

I remember when you couldn't get hernioplasty in the USA. Steelworkers began to travel to Canada to have the procedure to fix their hernias. They would drive back the next day and have a very low rate of reoccurrence. In the USA, it was not FDA

approved so you had to have traditional surgery and lay in bed for a week and have it reoccur in a few years. When the money started going to Canada, the FDA fast tracked approval for the mesh procedure in the USA. Today it is standard operating procedure.

Competition caused that improvement, but there is no competition in the USA. Every state has a health department that licenses hospitals, doctors, and dentists. If you don't respect the market place, you don't get a license to practice. So much

for Capitalism. Guaranteed your medical community has one of the largest Political Action Committees in your state, and they put plenty in your representatives pockets to ensure things don't change any time soon.

 

[TDX]

I think I might have to have an EEG then, not trouble shot for Temporal Lobe Epilepsy as yet.

You have been severely mentally ill for many years, but never got an EEG? When I was at the mental hospital, this was one of the first things they did.

 

[forestx5]

I went through the lamictal ramp up and was on it briefly. I remember thinking it was having a positive effect at first. Thereafter, I didn't notice any permanent improvement in my symptoms, so I discontinued lamictal.

I knew someone who had a severe adverse reaction and had to spend more than 2 weeks in the hospital after developing "the rash". I think that was part of my unease with lamictal.

My biggest complaints over the years were severe insomnia and anxiety so bad it made me nauseous. I found meds that dealt with those issues. I could survive the depression if I could sleep and eat.

After the ECT, I found that escitalopram was the best SSRI with the lowest side effect profile for me. That's all the psych meds I take now.

 

[Chip1021]

Regarding ECT; although you report feeling better afterwards, there are two sides to every story. I feel its my duty to tell the other side...

Thank you for this.

I tried ECT several times because, well, I was extremely desperate and i already had many of the problems that can result from ECT, so I figured it didn't matter.

But at the hospital all they mention is that "some people have memory loss for the events immediately preceding ECT", and many are unprepared about what could happen.

I also don't understand the logic that intentionally giving someone a seizure is supposed to FIX their brain. There is a difference between feeling better and being healthy.

 

[TDX]

Regarding ECT; although you report feeling better afterwards, there are two sides to every story. I feel its my duty to tell the other side...

You should take into account that Peter Breggin isn't someone who should be taken seriously:
https://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/NegativeBR/breggin.html
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-bradley/some-background-on-peter-_b_4333.html
https://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/breggin.html

Concerning the study, that is discussed in the article, it is clear that electroconvulsive therapy must change something physically in the brain for it in order to work. This might be considered damage. But if this "damage" so vastly improves brain function that it cures severe depression, the question is if the prior condition wasn't even more damaging. I think you could liken it to surgery, where you also "damage" the body in order to correct a problem and by this improve it's functioning.

But at the hospital all they mention is that "some people have memory loss for the events immediately preceding ECT", and many are unprepared about what could happen.

I also think there is some dishonesty among psychiatrists surrounding the side-effects of electroconvulsive therapy. For most people the side-effects might be benign in the long run, but I don't see a reason to doubt the validity of the horror stories. I'm sure that if treatments like kappa-opioid-antagonists and Rapastinel don't help me, I'm going to try ECT as well. But due to the risks and consider it the last resort.

I also don't understand the logic that intentionally giving someone a seizure is supposed to FIX their brain. There is a difference between feeling better and being healthy.

It was discovered by chance that seizures can work for certain mental disorders. Nobody really understands why yet.

You should also keep in mind that in many, if not most, illnesses it is not possible to revert the body into it's pre-disease "healthy" state, while symptomatic treatment, that makes the patient "feel better", can still be possible.

 

[forestx5]

Thank you ASM for being the devil's advocate in regards to ECT. I did a quick check on Dr. Peter Breggin's credentials, and found similar articles as listed by TDX.

Here is one from HuffPost https://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-bradley/some-background-on-peter-_b_4333.html

We shouldn't forget that there are huge sums of money involved in psychiatric treatments. I don't receive any, and assume you don't either.

If Dr. Peter Breggen is in a position to direct the flow of $$ through scare tactics, then I'm sure some of it finds its way into his lab coat.

I don't promote ECT, except perhaps indirectly through my honest experience. It was painless except for the burning sensation caused by the anesthetic

going into my hand through an IV tube. I did have some minor memory loss immediately following the procedure, but I do believe I have recovered all my faculties.

To suggest I have suffered impairment equal to someone who has undergone lobotomy surgery is ridiculous. As to why it works, I could give you my analogy as a former computer technician.

Sometimes a computer's software crashes. The computer no longer responds to your input. Removing and re-applying

the electricity causes the firmware to reinitiate the boot sequence. Before you know it, you are running applications again.

And so every story has another side. Planes never struck the Twin Towers? Mass shootings are staged by

crisis actors? The minority who believe the other side are called conspiracy theorists. They give real conspiracy theorists like me, a bad name.