Oh the joy.

I cannot wait to be able to have time to start blogging again properly. Theres so much in my head and many goings on that I need to write type down!! 

There's just this annoying cloud hanging over everything at the moment and that is the dreaded DISSERTATION. Urgh it's eating into everything and unfortunately I've had to take extra time to get it done to make up for missed time because of Epilepsy related stuff. Very frustrating. 

I'll get there though and believe me I CANNOT wait until it's all written up and bound ready to hand over to the university. But for now it's just a matter of sitting, staring, reading, typing, note scribbling, etc and repeating a thousand times over! 

St Valentine

Today is Valentine's day :) The sun is shining and the love is flowing! 

Interestingly...

St Valentine is also a patron saint of Epilepsy.  

Have a wonderful love filled day :)

XX

Good giggle :)

Last night was an unexpected lovely night out with friends :)

So there I was wrapped up in my dressing gown in my room watching something on tv silently stressing over uni work etc and ready for bed... fast forward an hour or so and I'm sat on the floor with my housemates dressed up for town sipping a vodka and orange. Yep ACTUAL alcohol... risky eh? Well yes but sometimes it's just tough plus I know when enough is enough! 

I don't quite know how it happened but it did involve a sufficient amount of peer pressure!! Now usually I have to say no to anything involving alcohol and going out at night which believe me is not easy for a 22 year old student but given the amount of medication floating around my system, risk of seizures etc I say no for a damn good reason. I did say no to start with... but after some massive persuading from friends and sitting and thinking to myself and contemplating my meds increase and all that crap I decided that actually yes I could do with a good laugh and to catch up with lots of people especially after recent happenings!! 

I try to smile over everything all the time but even that in itself is tiring so to have a real reason to laugh and smile was so so good :D

Just to make it all the better I had absolutely NO seizures :D that time a week ago I was lying in hospital! Amazing feeling! Plus we are currently waiting for a great big massively fattening ridiculously unhealthy pizza on the way to us... YUM!

One awful week.

This week has definitely been one that I really wish hadn't existed!

It all started with a big Tonic Clonic seizure in the early hours of Monday morning resulting in a huge headache, bloody mouth, aching from head to toe and a very bruised and swollen hand with an inability to move two of my fingers. Not fun. So after resting for a while longer as post-seizure exhaustion had taken over, off to accident and emergency or an x-ray it was... lovely way to spend a morning. LUCKILY though my hand wasn't broken just some "deeply bruised" tendons. By midday we were out of the hospital and as I was feeling much better so decided to walk back into town to catch a bus home instead of us paying for a taxi... (we are students so ANYTHING to save a few pennies is good!) While we were in town though we popped into a couple of shops and boom I started to feel unbelievably sick. And that was that sick sick sick.... it was horrible. I got to feel so poorly and shaking like a leaf by late afternoon that my housemate decided to take me to the emergency clinic at my local surgery. We saw the doctor, I had a temperature and they said it was probably a sickness bug and it would pass in a couple of days. After not being able to keep any food, drink or medication down and mostly sleeping through the days the bug still wasn't showing any signs of leaving. My legs felt like jelly, standing up made my balance feel all over the place and I was just so so so tired. Thursday I was meant to have lectures for most of the day but only managed about an hour before I decided to leave to go home and sleep. 

No medication for days of course resulted in much more in terms of seizures. Smaller ones were rife and had another Tonic Clonic Thursday night so by Friday I decided enough was enough. After ringing my Epilepsy Specialist nurse she told me to ring my GP straight away and explain to them that I still couldn't keep any medication down. The only doctor on that afternoon was a locum and after explaining what was wrong to the receptionist the doctor rang back pretty quick. After talking to her for a while over the phone she had to go and research my medication and ring me back. As soon as she rang me back she asked me to come into the surgery straight away. There she examined me and told me she was admitting me to the hospital that evening, rang the ward, wrote me a letter to take to them and sent me straight there. 

Once I got to the hospital thanks to my housemate :) one of my closest friends who I've known since I was literally a few days old and just so happens to be a med student came over from Cardiff to stay with me. I was triaged straight away with bloods taken, obs, EEG and chest x-ray. Then after a bit the doctor came to assess me and bless her tried SEVEN times to try and get a IV drip into my arms but with no success as my veins were too dehydrated and cold. She also did the usual neuro and reflex checks. 

It was a looong night with my obs being taken various times, and sleeping in hospital is always hard non-surprisingly. It was just a matter of hoping for no more big seizures and waiting for time to pass the the virus to go away and for me to be able to stomach medicine. I was given a paracetamol drink to drink sip by sip which was disgusting but given the cracking headache, minor temperature and need to rehydrate was well worth the taste. 

I woke up sometime during the night to find the nurse handing me some Diazepam to take (a new one for me). I was very confused and had no idea as to why this was happening until my friend and nurse explained that I had been having number a smaller seizures while asleep. I had absolutely no idea that this was happening and apart from a fuzzy head which I would have normally put down to being tired there wasn't any other particular clues.. (which does make me wonder if I often have lots of little seizures in my sleep normally..) Even after taking the Diazepam I continued to have seizures each time I fell back to sleep just with a little less frequency. Bad times. 

By the time the consultant came around to do his rounds in the morning I was feeling much better. He asked me about everything that had happened, did some more little checks and decided that as long as I could keep my much smaller dose of Keppra down with some fluids and a little bit of food I could be discharged after a urine test and a promise to ring my Epilepsy nurse to discuss the events ASAP. I REALLY don't like being in hospital for any reason (who does??) and after about 18 hours I was desperate to leave!! By the time breakfast was served I nervously tried to eat and with the help of some anti sickness medicine NEVER in my life have I been so pleased to be able to eat a small piece of toast and drink a cup of water! 

My lovely friend stayed with me for the whole night which I am so incredibly thankful for. Making me giggle as much as possible, distracting me from everything and just generally watching over me especially while I was seizing. **massive love to you**

Now I'm back home it's just a matter of slowly building up my food and drink intake with the help of the anti sickness tablets which are AMAZING! They make me really hyper and talkative which I think are pretty good side effects for once! I also have to start my regular anti seizure medicine from a small dose again as after my usual dose of 2000mgs of keppra and 300mgs per day of Vimpat had completely left my system, taking that amount straight away again could be toxic. It will take a few weeks to get back up to full dose again but patience is everything with Epilepsy! 

So an eventful week and to say I'm tired is an understatement but thanks to my friends and the medics I'm feeling SO much better :D The queasiness is easing slowly but surely and the ability to eat properly again is creeping back :D Bring on the food!! 

Drama!

Well I was doing really rather good seizure wise for a while :) Neither my friends or I had noticed any for maybe about a week?!? 

Then there was a bus crash just up the road from where I live. I left my house to walk up to the university for a tutorial to find a bus precariously bumped up the curb outside the house with most of the side windows smashed up. There were no cars around and I saw the driver walking up the middle of the bus so obviously shouted across the road to ask if he was ok and he told me he was and the police where on the way. Literally as he told me they pulled up so I carried on walking up the hill wondering how on earth it had got into that state with no other cars or any obvious signs of damage around. I soon found out though... further up the hill there is a horribly tight corner for a fast and sometimes very busy road and shoved to the side just around the corner was a huge lorry. There was glass and debris all over the place and cars soon started backing up and trying to pass through. A police car had just arrived but with only the one officer and parked on the wrong side of the hidden stationary lorry. I didn't even think twice about walking back around the corner to slow any approaching cars down and stop them as there is no way they would be able to see the accident literally RIGHT around the corner and as I said it's a fast road!! The policeman yelled for me to keep warning the cars of the danger until they could get the lorry moved away from the scene as given that he was the only one there at that moment there was no one else to help. Eventually they managed to move the lorry further down the road so it was in plain sight of any drivers and the traffic could start to move slowly again once they had swept the road thanks to a neighbouring house and his sweeping brush! 

Basically what had happened is both the lorry and the bus hit the corner at the same time and there just wasn't enough room for both the long vehicles to take the turn which resulted in the lorries wing mirror to smash into the buses side windows and drag along the side of it ripping them to pieces. Crazy stuff. Thankfully and very luckily no one was hurt. Needless to say the adrenaline was most definitely pumping!! 

So after all this occurred I finally got to university and was still able to see have a meeting about my dissertation. Which was going well until I went from talking about something I was discussing in my dissertation to tuning into my tutor trying to get my attention. Yep an absence. I was sooo annoyed but not really surprised. 

Any who I did manage to gets lots of work done today which is fab! Still plenty more to do though!

x 

A reason to celebrate!

This past weekend was spent celebrating what, for me, is a HUGE achievement!!! I found out that I am doing much much MUCH better at university this year. This time last year I had to drop off my course and now I'm on track for an honours degree!! It's crazy, the sense of relief that I felt when a tutor told me how my work had been graded and how pleased they were with my progress, was almost overwhelming. Even now I can't stop smiling!!! 

One of my closest friends who graduated last year with my original class and used to live with me came up to stay for the weekend. It was so nice to see her and to have a proper catch up on all things life. The weekend was full of night's spent chatting away, a trip to Cardiff for some shopping, lazing around watching films and even a night out in towns clubs with friends. It felt like I had gone back in time a couple of years with not much of a care in the world for a few days. Really refreshing... definitely needed it!

A couple of days later and I think I've finally caught up on missed sleep :) saying that I haven't taken my meds yet... and have plenty to be getting on with today! Early nights are a must this week :)

Better carry on with the hard work for university to keep on track, starting with carrying on writing this 10000 word dissertation. Fun fun!! 

Importance of tomorrow.

At 2PM tomorrow I have an assessment feedback meeting with my tutor and I will find out if my decision to suspend studies half way through my final year of my degree last year was worth it. 

Last March about 4 months after being diagnosed with Epilepsy I made one of the hardest decisions in life so far. That was to leave my course, my course mates and to pause life as I knew it studying photographic art. The seizures, the diagnosis and the medication etc all lead to a whole load of stress that I tried to carry for as long as I could but eventually I was became completely drained and I fell behind with the coursework meaning could no longer keep up with everyone and everything. The decision to leave was truly gutting, I felt like I had failed and Epilepsy had beaten me. If I am completely honest until I left I didn't realise just how HUGELY IMPORTANT this degree is to me.

Despite my seizures still being uncontrolled and I am in fact having more seizure types, I am now back at university re-sitting the year and I'm half way through. Last week we had an assessment to see how far we have come with our work, and where will take it in the next few months.

I've kept relatively quiet about being nervous about finding out my results but I REALLY cannot explain how much it means to me just to be that bit more progressed this year compared to last, in terms of the level of work I have done. I've tried as hard as I can and deep down I feel I have taken a step forward :) 

I've decided that if my grades are at least the same as last year and my tutors are happy then all the tiredness, stress and hard work will have been worth it. 

Only time will tell! :)