Just to update you, but I don’t think I’ll update you every week because there won’t be that much to tell – or will there?
I had two sessions this week. On Tuesday I did the aeroplane game and magnetic stimulation again. I’m getting quite good at the game it apparently. The idea is that if I fly the aeroplane correctly through the hoop my brain gets a dose of dopamine and this encourages me to do it again. If I win it illustrates that my powers of concentration, processing and problem solving are working well but if I do that too often Ms Brain makes the test harder – I’m told it’s not good to win all the time because brain needs negative as well as positive reinforcement. But, nevertheless I try to win! The magnetic stimulation was slightly different today because, as well as putting the magnets on my head, she put them on my stomach to provoke activity in the gut. According to Ms Brain, who clearly knows much more about this than I do, gut stimulation can also help although I’m not sure how – but it felt lovely.
Afterwards Ms Brain gave me electrical stimulation. ‘You’ve been doing quite well,’ she said, ‘but I want you to do better’. After the last session I felt warmth in my brain, as I mentioned in my last blog, but that weekend I also had a vivid dream. Now it being a dream, and me being me I can’t remember what it was about but I do know that it had all the same qualities as those that I had when I was on the anti-depressant called venlafaxine, many moons ago. It felt that I was alive in the dream, it felt intense and the real-life characters were caricatures of themselves – believable but somehow an extreme version of themselves. Ms Brain thought having the vivid dream was a good sign of my brain rewiring but since it had only happened once and that I hadn’t noticed any other changes in my day-to-day thought patterns we should try and increase the power of the tools that she was using to help me. It would take a few sessions, she said, to work out what method was going to help me best. So, she performed electrical stimulation as well as magnetic stimulation. ‘But we have to go slowly’ she said as she had said last time ‘because you have epilepsy and your brain is sensitive. You will have to start at a level much lower that the therapeutic dose’.
I’m used to doctors being cautious w
I’m used to doctors being cautious with me. When I gave birth to my son, it all happened very quickly. One minute I was downstairs on the ward and 11 minutes later I was upstairs in the delivery suite giving birth. However, all I remember were the panicked shouts of – ‘Come quick she’s got epilepsy’ and all of a sudden there were 11 people[1] in the room for what was a pretty straight forward natural birth without pain relief (the panic was caused by the fact that the stress of delivery can, for a very small minority of women with epilepsy, bring on seizures[2]). There was also the time when a psychiatrist wanted to prescribe me an anti-depressant because absolutely nothing was working and I was feeling suicidal every day. However, he said, ‘I can prescribe you this medication. But it is a risk. It can bring on seizures. If you decide to take the medication you should have somebody with you at all times over the next few days.’ I took the risk because I was desperate, but it worked. I calmed down and I didn’t seize. (however, previously when another psychiatrist prescribed me with an anti-depressant, without giving any caveats, I was not impressed when taking it caused me to have a clonic-tonic seizure).
So, Ms Brain applied electrical wires to my head and these gave me a small tingling feeling. On top of the wires she put on the magnetic stimulant boxes that she gave me last time and she put the boxes them on my gut as well. I do trust that she know what she is doing and I just have to continue with the process and see what happens next.
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[1] Obviously I can’t remember how many people but it was a lot people.
[2] See https://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/giving-birth-and-epilepsy#.W8BmFmhKhPY (accessed 12/10/2018)
