Sogger’s Blog

I recently mentioned my problems with Tegretol and that the neurologist wanted to change to something with the same molecular structure. With hindsight, I’m not sure why he wanted to do this, given that Tegretol didn’t work, but his overriding concern seems to be getting me off the Lamictal. He therefore prescribed Trileptal and I switched over to it on the Friday.

It was on the Saturday that it started; it began with pain behind my eyes, something akin to a migraine (which as I said earlier, is something I suffered from before the epilepsy started, although I cannot say whether there is a link between these two observations). This was a bit of a pain (no pun intended), because we were away for the weekend and I couldn’t just slope off to bed. As the weekend went on, it got worse, and I found myself unable to get warm, shivering constantly and generally feeling rougher than I have for a long time. To compound this, the rashes that I also spoke about recently got worse and even itchier (hhhmmm, are you enjoying the imagery?). This led me to read the lengthy tome entitled, “Trileptal Side Effects”.

Among this long list were common ones such as “flu-symptons” and “cutaneous eruptions”, and, “if you experience any of these, stop treatment immediately and seek the advice of your doctor”. Great. I therefore stopped and the seizures started. It’s now Sunday and we are on the long drive home with me shivering even more. As we arrive, I have to get out of the car and open the gate. It is then that the shivering gets worse and I just want to get into bed and under a pile of 10,000 blankets. I fumble for the front door key as the shivers continue to get worse. Oh dear, a quick trip to the bathroom is necessary, and you can imagine (if you are a bloke) what that is like to pee with a shaky hand (and I speak in terms of directional control rather than teenage kicks).

Finally to bed, and I am virtually flinging the sheets off the bed, so much am I shivering. After a few minutes of trying to stop it, things are down to an acceptable level and I can lay in the dark, fully clothed, wearing my beloved Parka and covered in several blankets (fewer than the requested 10,000, but enough to be going on with). I surmised, after calming down, that what I experienced was a panic attack, brought on by not being able to get to bed as quickly as I wanted, and worrying that I am experiencing some horrible side effects and being unable to contact the neurologist to do something about it. If this was indeed the case, then it is the first time it has happened to me - apart from the time when I was abused for a full 90 minutes by a bunch of footballers during a match in the south of England for simply being “a northern c**t”. In either case, it is not something that I wish to experience again.

I called the neurologist on Monday morning and described the symptoms to him. The fact that I was also running a temperature (38.9°) suggested to the neurologist that it was “only” flu and that I should see the GP. The GP wasn’t so sure and prescribed blood and urine tests. The following day, the test results came back and, sure enough, it was “only” flu. I now know that people who say that they have a sore head and a runny nose do not have flu, and know that this is the first time that I have ever had it. 10 days later, I am still weak, and a recent walk in the Lake District left me unable to move for two days afterwards!

So I have restarted the Trileptal and of course this means that the rashes are still there, and, given that  it doesn’t work, I am still having the seizures. Now I just have to wait until June 2nd to see the neurologist and try yet another cocktail. And so it goes on.

Anyway, enough of my detailed epilepsy problems for the moment - If you find them extremely tedious, bear with me because I write them in order to help anyone else going through the same thing - it is difficult to find a description of symptoms that match my own when I am browsing the forums.

As Corporal Jones said: “Don’t Panic!”.

Last week, my boss and I hosted a 2-day training session for a major customer in Switzerland. The training was in English because the customer, a large industrial manufacturer, had French and German native speakers in its ranks. It all went very well, and the last session in the afternoon of day 2 was a question and answer session. We tried to set the tone by keeping it “high-level”, future directions for the product etc. In order to show willing, my boss wrote down the questions and we promised to take them into account during the upcoming roadmap discussions.

All went well and the questions threw up some interesting ideas. However, one attendee was well known for extremely long, pointless, unanswerable questions and the moment we had been dreading arrived as his hand shot up and he managed to butt his way in. He started on his question/monologue and eyes in the room glazed over.

My boss, ever attentive, was writing down the question. Hoping to exchange raised eyebrows, I turned to him, only to notice that instead of writing down the question, he was repeatedly writing the French equivalent of,

“What an ass-hole; What an ass-hole; What an ass-hole; What an ass-hole; What an ass-hole; What an ass-hole”.

I coughed discreetly and nodded at the large screen behind us: unfortunately, he hadn’t realised that his laptop was still plugged into the video-projector, so his words were projected, large-as-life, on the screen behind us. So much was the questioner into his subject that he never flinched and carried on with his question - he is a German speaker, so I don’t know if he knows any French. Unfortunately, many people in the room did, so ripples of laughter permeated throughout (there were 22 attendees). A quick tug of the cable caused the screen to go blue and finally broke the questioners attention.

Finally, the 10 minute question was fended off with an “OK, we will take note of your concerns” and the training course was over. Afterwards, the questioners boss came up to us and said, “Well, yes, X can be rather annoying can’t he?”.

So the golden rule is: Always check your video-projector cable isn’t plugged in when writing an insulting comment about an important customer. Take this with you through life, and all will be well.

Why the title? Well, in one of my favourite films, The Shining, Jack Nicolson spends the whole winter holed up with his family in a remote hotel in order to finish writing his novel. However, one day his wife discovers that he has written hundreds of pages, all of them saying only, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. One of the most famous scenes in the film (the one you see on the classic poster) is when he breaks down a bathroom door, pokes his head through and with a malicious smile says, “Here’s Johnny”. Class. Anyway, if you haven’t already seen it I’ll let you go and watch this cinematic classic and I’ll get back to writing up the questions ready for our roadmap meeting (omitting some of them of course).