Just a Bump in the Road

After my seizure episode, Kim approached me about something that I never thought I'd have to deal with. At least, not as a 33 year old. She approached me about getting a medical alert necklace so I could alert 911 if something happened to me while I was home alone. This may seem weird, but that was a challenging thought for me to wrap my brain around. It probably seems really weird considering I'd wrapped my brain around the fact that I was 31 years old when I was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, had emergency brain surgery, emergency spinal surgery, arm surgery, several ER visits, multiple ambulance rides up north... You'd think by now, a medical alert system would seem natural. While it logically made sense to me, it has been emotionally challenging for me to grapple with. And that all came to a head yesterday... Kim, who never ceases to amaze me, spent a lot of time researching medical alert companies and she spent a lot of time on the phone trying to find the best optio

On April 20th, as you may already know, I went to the ER as a result of several small seziures, which resulted in a major seizure shortly after arrival at the hospital. I spent a couple of days up north being monitored and was then sent home. I was placed on a regiment of anti-seizure meds and steroids. The steroids, in general, have helped me a lot with swelling in my brain throughout the course of this battle. It was believed that the seizures were caused due to swelling around the tumor that had been irradiated at the beginning of April. Less than two weeks after getting home from the hospital, I was off of the steroids. It had been a very quick taper filled with rather low doses of the steroid. While the general idea has always been to get me off of the steroids as quickly as possible, this seemed a little quick in my opinion. That being said, we went along with it. So, on Wednesday, May 6th, I was officially off of the steroid. The next couple of days seemed fairly normal. I w

After my visit to the hospital for my seizures, I was prescribed Keppra. Keppra is an anti-seizure medication. While it is effective, it can come with some side effects that aren't the greatest. In my particular case, it makes me irritable. It's a weird experience to recognize that your mind isn't functioning like normal. I'm a fairly calm and mellow individual by nature, but after starting on Keppra, I was able to notice a difference in the way my mind was working. Kim could notice it too. And it was exhausting trying to mentally work through the issues I was dealing with. On April 28th, I visited with a neurologist. In my last post, I talk about that visit and how frustrating it was. However, he prescribed me vitamin B6 to help with the irritability that Keppra can bring. I was looking forward to getting started on that to help me through what was going on. A few days after that visit, we picked up my prescription and I was able to start taking the vitamin B6 to hel