On authenticity....
It's ironic your initial comment and is precisely why I've held out so long on following through with the completion of my 'memoir'...and I apologize if I seemingly bit your head off...
My entire life; up until I turned 16 my father told me and my brother that we were liars and eventually placed ME in therapy at 15-16 for; beginning around age 8 for me my mother began behaving oddly for hours on end, or mid-night I'd awake from sleep and she'd be standing above my bed with a knife claiming I 'ate her donuts' and demanding i return them - yet she'd deny these things happened when the next day I approached her or my dad with what had happened. Doctors have since created a timeline that puts me at around age 8 when she began presenting with left temporal lobe epilepsy in quite possible the rarist of ways ever caught by neurologists (it took 4 years of denial and then finally it got so bad my dad and her parents were convinced these black-outs and periods of delusional, irrational and/or violent behavior was due to drug abuse - and though tox-screens were ALWAYS missing the crucial clue that would have cooberated this theoury, they would come up clean and yet at least 4 different hospitals from NY to Conneticut would insst on pumping her stomach or charcoaling her DESPITE A NEGATIVE/CLEAN TOXICOLOGY REPORT - but sans any other medical rationale for her erratic and sudden-onset/acute hysterics they looked at the hoofbeats and IMMEDIATELY said 'fuck zebras - it's never zebras get me a hourse' (med school common phrase 'when u hear hoofbeats think horses not zebras' - meaning it's almost always a diagnosis that's right in front of you so don't dig around and search for clues that aren't there - assume the common cause and discharge asap) - and so they jumped to psych over and over again and MADE the diagnoses fit.
Unfortunately for me I was 16 the first time somebody else saw her have a seizure and told me that I wasn't crazy (just after my first therapist "*FIRED*" me - explaining calmly that after a years' treatment he had concluded I was a pathological liar and most likely psychotic to a degree and that this field was a specialty he could not work with 'ethically') - My mothers' TLE only presented with the very UNCOMMON form of seizure known as complex-partial seizures - which presents itself as the only type of seizure said to be 100% unmistakable in terms of diagnostics when tested using a standard (running) EEG - the wide-awake patient 'seizing' in that moment would be unaware of the fact; as would those surrounding said-patient - because they appear, speaking from the non-clinical-outsiders' perspective, to be awake & alert - but they may not be talking as they normally would or they may appear to be hallucinating; seeing things that aren't there or even delusional/paranoid (i.e.: behaving as if they are in a dream because this form of seizure is like sleep walking while awake - the brain switches off the wrong parts; simulating sleep & then neurons misfire - as the person may be driving, walking, working, etc - nobody can tell without neurological training that this persons' brain just switched from living their reality to living a dream-reality that may span hours in duration - the only 'tell' of sorts is that after 2-4 hours typically of this out-of-sorts behavior (or they may act normal - it varies from seizure to seizure - just as dreams can mimic real life and therefor you behave in your dream as you would in normal life - or your dream may have you running from zombies that appear human and you could therefor react in a way you would while in the dream state while appearing alert and rational - without warning) the brain suddenly stops seizing and they outside physisioligcal change may appear slight at best.
Eventually, when enough people tell you "x" happened and you have no memory of it or no memory of how you're suddenly stirring meat sauce on the stove top and the clock says 7:00pm yet just one blink ago you were snuggled in the downstairs sofa and the cable box was lit bright and it had just turned 2:00pm - soon the patient begins to believe they truly are going crazy.
An EEG will show the person in the midst of a complex-partial seizure as sleeping - they will say into the mic that seperates the monitoring doctors from the patient, "wake up Suzanne" - but she will be confused - claiming having not yet fallen asleep. It soon becomes obvious the TLE - but psychosomatically the patient has already lost touch with the 'great divide'...
Doctors, therapists (since growing older - after my WLS I got a new therapist who saw me begin teaching, graduate with my 2nd BA, plan a wedding, move 4 times, then return from my honeymoon looking like a leper. He helped me as much as he could, as he was pre-certified to becoming a psychiatrist as a 'general practitioner' or GP as they were called before the system threw that position away and created PCPs), old colleagues, hospital staff from all over find my story of just the BEHCETS fascinating enough that they insist that I write a memoir... but I've spent 6 years battling with the idea - as I know that, prior to my eye pain/posterior-inflammation, that I loved a good memoir and having my father as a writer I know good from bad as well as a great memoir written that is great only because it's based on truth and enhanced... there is no happy ending here - my roller coaster doesn't go up and down and up and down the way people metaphorically say life does - my roller coaster goes down and upside down where the mechanics break down or become tired and neglectful and don't notice I've been stuck upside down...and then as I begin to ride up I fall or a rail breaks before I can ever get to the top... Reading this I would see myself as pathetic, as an exagerated version of truth (because it goes against the only thing that keeps this species going - the one common idea that 'everything happens for a reason' - and the thought that ALL of this - and there is SOOOO much more it's surreal at its' BEST - to think all this was for the reason of bestowing my suffering on others through a written flacidized account of my own account of having lived through the inferno and THIS journal is my keepsake? THIS is what it was 'worth' - why it was 'all worth it'? And because - as an unbias reader I cannot believe that this girl could be just that fucking UNLUCKY - I'd see it as a long-drawn out - anti-climactic mexican telenovela that I, personally, wouldn't read for free...
:sigh:
My entire life; up until I turned 16 my father told me and my brother that we were liars and eventually placed ME in therapy at 15-16 for; beginning around age 8 for me my mother began behaving oddly for hours on end, or mid-night I'd awake from sleep and she'd be standing above my bed with a knife claiming I 'ate her donuts' and demanding i return them - yet she'd deny these things happened when the next day I approached her or my dad with what had happened. Doctors have since created a timeline that puts me at around age 8 when she began presenting with left temporal lobe epilepsy in quite possible the rarist of ways ever caught by neurologists (it took 4 years of denial and then finally it got so bad my dad and her parents were convinced these black-outs and periods of delusional, irrational and/or violent behavior was due to drug abuse - and though tox-screens were ALWAYS missing the crucial clue that would have cooberated this theoury, they would come up clean and yet at least 4 different hospitals from NY to Conneticut would insst on pumping her stomach or charcoaling her DESPITE A NEGATIVE/CLEAN TOXICOLOGY REPORT - but sans any other medical rationale for her erratic and sudden-onset/acute hysterics they looked at the hoofbeats and IMMEDIATELY said 'fuck zebras - it's never zebras get me a hourse' (med school common phrase 'when u hear hoofbeats think horses not zebras' - meaning it's almost always a diagnosis that's right in front of you so don't dig around and search for clues that aren't there - assume the common cause and discharge asap) - and so they jumped to psych over and over again and MADE the diagnoses fit.
Unfortunately for me I was 16 the first time somebody else saw her have a seizure and told me that I wasn't crazy (just after my first therapist "*FIRED*" me - explaining calmly that after a years' treatment he had concluded I was a pathological liar and most likely psychotic to a degree and that this field was a specialty he could not work with 'ethically') - My mothers' TLE only presented with the very UNCOMMON form of seizure known as complex-partial seizures - which presents itself as the only type of seizure said to be 100% unmistakable in terms of diagnostics when tested using a standard (running) EEG - the wide-awake patient 'seizing' in that moment would be unaware of the fact; as would those surrounding said-patient - because they appear, speaking from the non-clinical-outsiders' perspective, to be awake & alert - but they may not be talking as they normally would or they may appear to be hallucinating; seeing things that aren't there or even delusional/paranoid (i.e.: behaving as if they are in a dream because this form of seizure is like sleep walking while awake - the brain switches off the wrong parts; simulating sleep & then neurons misfire - as the person may be driving, walking, working, etc - nobody can tell without neurological training that this persons' brain just switched from living their reality to living a dream-reality that may span hours in duration - the only 'tell' of sorts is that after 2-4 hours typically of this out-of-sorts behavior (or they may act normal - it varies from seizure to seizure - just as dreams can mimic real life and therefor you behave in your dream as you would in normal life - or your dream may have you running from zombies that appear human and you could therefor react in a way you would while in the dream state while appearing alert and rational - without warning) the brain suddenly stops seizing and they outside physisioligcal change may appear slight at best.
Eventually, when enough people tell you "x" happened and you have no memory of it or no memory of how you're suddenly stirring meat sauce on the stove top and the clock says 7:00pm yet just one blink ago you were snuggled in the downstairs sofa and the cable box was lit bright and it had just turned 2:00pm - soon the patient begins to believe they truly are going crazy.
An EEG will show the person in the midst of a complex-partial seizure as sleeping - they will say into the mic that seperates the monitoring doctors from the patient, "wake up Suzanne" - but she will be confused - claiming having not yet fallen asleep. It soon becomes obvious the TLE - but psychosomatically the patient has already lost touch with the 'great divide'...
Doctors, therapists (since growing older - after my WLS I got a new therapist who saw me begin teaching, graduate with my 2nd BA, plan a wedding, move 4 times, then return from my honeymoon looking like a leper. He helped me as much as he could, as he was pre-certified to becoming a psychiatrist as a 'general practitioner' or GP as they were called before the system threw that position away and created PCPs), old colleagues, hospital staff from all over find my story of just the BEHCETS fascinating enough that they insist that I write a memoir... but I've spent 6 years battling with the idea - as I know that, prior to my eye pain/posterior-inflammation, that I loved a good memoir and having my father as a writer I know good from bad as well as a great memoir written that is great only because it's based on truth and enhanced... there is no happy ending here - my roller coaster doesn't go up and down and up and down the way people metaphorically say life does - my roller coaster goes down and upside down where the mechanics break down or become tired and neglectful and don't notice I've been stuck upside down...and then as I begin to ride up I fall or a rail breaks before I can ever get to the top... Reading this I would see myself as pathetic, as an exagerated version of truth (because it goes against the only thing that keeps this species going - the one common idea that 'everything happens for a reason' - and the thought that ALL of this - and there is SOOOO much more it's surreal at its' BEST - to think all this was for the reason of bestowing my suffering on others through a written flacidized account of my own account of having lived through the inferno and THIS journal is my keepsake? THIS is what it was 'worth' - why it was 'all worth it'? And because - as an unbias reader I cannot believe that this girl could be just that fucking UNLUCKY - I'd see it as a long-drawn out - anti-climactic mexican telenovela that I, personally, wouldn't read for free...
:sigh: