The difference is that the neurologists and epileptologists and every other doctor who is connected to conversation or are part of the neurological committee because in addition to their standard medical profession, they have the additive knowledge when it relates to all neurological conditions OR just epilepsy. And most of them will only change what they believe about Epilepsy and anything connected with it if there is published research that proves this. There is an extremely small percentage of the world's neurologists or epileptologists who are also epileptic themselves. And most of the other medical professions (as told by friends in those professions on here) were forced to no longer to be able to do the job she/he was trained to do because of too many seizures and additional issues because of epilepsy. Thus, in my case, the neurological committee at Brigham and Women's Hospital (Boston) along with other doctors who I worked with and/or interacted with at Massachusetts General Hospital and my 2nd neurologist will not touch the topic of what happened to me from June 2003 - January 2005. On his own (not the words of the committee), my current neurologist believes that I did sustain additional brain damage during this period. He also told me that there is no way for to examine any brain damage to the inner brain of a human being (or any creature that has a similar brain structure) until after the person or creature has died. Now that I have been doing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(CBT) for 6+ weeks, I have been able to see from my personal perspective (note: I still have not completely taken down my Wall -- the last obstacle is me and my guilt, thus a huge challenge to overcome. However, once I started poking holes in my Wall (depression and anxiety based on guilt of accusing God of making a mistake in the summer of 2003 by saving me), I have seen that a lot of what I thought was all brain damage has been in fact simply the huge wall of depression, anxiety and guilt. I can see even now that there is at least a small part of it that is brain damage, but nothing like the amount I thought there was for 20 years+ prior to making holes in my Wall with CBT. However, there are so many other areas where the majority of neurologists will not budge, and a major one is that any seizure that, even a previously diagnosed epileptic, patient has while hooked up to an EEG and the EEG registers no change during it, is dubbed a hallucination, pseudo seizure or an Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures (PNES).

It was not until after I got the report on the June 2023 memory test that I took at BWH and the recommendation by the psychologist who gave me the test and who wrote the report, and then consulted with my neurologist, psychiatrist and therapist (to make sure that she was trained in CBT) that I began Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(CBT) on September 1st. And I had very little progress over the first 4 weeks, but major progress in the 5th and 6th weeks, as I penetrated my Wall and then proceeded to knock down large pieces of the wall, has lowered both my depression and anxiety levels, increased me to a positive form that I have never been in my lifetime, and given me access to memories as far back as when I was 2 years-old, and a major increase in my memory recall.

@A MyEpilepsyTeam Member You need to put an asterisk next to that comment. It is the cause for MOST times an aura happens, but there are some of us (perhaps because of brain damage caused by the delay in diagnosis) who do NOT have anything following the 3 second aura. And this was one of the things verified for me by the neurological committee that my neurologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital (Boston) presented my epilepsy to and every update/change. And it was research that was only published about 5 years ago that confirmed that a delay in the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy that begins OR restarts when the person is a teenager or an adult will result in brain damage for the time period before the person is diagnosed and treated. In my case, my epilepsy returned (febrile seizures beginning when I was a day old on September 11, 1966 and then stopped somewhere before the age of 5. And then my epilepsy went into hibernation while working on the form of the new seizure(s) when it returned.

As a result of my neurologist sharing the fact that I had suffered 17 years of brain damage (1980 - 1997) and had a non-cancerous brain tumor (actually an extremely small lesion that consists of 3 dots connected by 2 not so straight lines) near the top of my brain, my anxiety level started building from that date, until when I was exchanging messages (Patient Messenger) with the psychologist who did my first (ever) memory test (via ZOOM) in early 2022, that she told me that my anxiety disorder was out of control. She contacted the Psychiatry department to get me a psychiatrist. And she signed me up for the Anxiety ZOOM group for me to be educated by the psychologist who teaches those groups (I believe about 10 sessions long) to get a full understanding of Anxiety and how to work to calm myself and reduce Anxiety. However, mine was so high that my psychiatrist had to raise my antidepressant level on our first session, and we would have more via ZOOM for the rest of 2022 and all of 2023 so far (I have the required in person session scheduled with him for November 24, 2023). and sign me up for 16 sessions with a Speech and Cognitive Therapist during the spring of 2023. And because I was in the worse depression of my life in early 2023 (I had never before had all of the extra sleeping during any depression before the one of the first half of this year (spiked higher, after I had come down in May, when my dad was in the hospital after a deer tick bite had given him Babesias (see link below) was killing him (multiple doctors had confirmed for my older brother and I on the Saturday night at the end of the near week --he was taken to the hospital on Monday morning--that he would be dead some time overnight.
https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/babesiosis/gen_in...
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@A MyEpilepsyTeam Member Technically as soon as any change happens they now define this as Focal aware. It's still aura but it's just a more clearer term.

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Becky, this is absolutely true for all "normal epileptics", however, in cases like mine where brain damage was caused because of years between the epilepsy begins (or in my case returns to being active from hibernation) and when the person is diagnosed and receives initial treatment (in my case that was 17 years). Thus, I have aura barrages and even single aura WITHOUT any focal aware seizure attached. And I can have hours of uninterrupted waves of one aura after another (with the only thing that has successfully stopped them being getting to sleep). And an entire neurological committee at Brigham and Women's Hospital (Boston) is aware of this and told me that it is possible and not a threat to my health. In fact, the only threat to my health when I am having any seizure is potential major injury from dropping to the floor from a full seizure OR my subconscious mind saying something while I am in a Focal Onset Impaired Awareness Seizures (complex partial seizures) -- especially when I have them after a full seizure and get up from the floor (and someone who does not know my type of seizures even some who do can mistake the fact that I am up and standing for the fact that my conscious mind is present, when reality is that I ALWAYS go into a Focal Onset Impaired Awareness Seizures (complex partial seizures) following one of my "full drop seizures". And the latter seizure can last a long time (the longest that I my sister recorded was 2 hours long). However, as I pointed out, I am the exception and NOT the rule when it comes to auras. Thus, even when I was initially getting auras in 1980 before the "full drop seizures", they were too often useless because I was also having them with no seizure following. And we don't know how many of our friends might also have brain damage, thus have a variant form of auras (without at least the Focal Aware seizure following). And, because epilepsy is a mutating neurological disorder, some of us have variations of the "standard" epileptic seizures which are not provided as examples in any list from the Epilepsy Foundation or anyone else. As the neurological committee told me (via my neurologist), there is no way for the medical community to see into the inner brain of a living human or other creature (no scan developed yet or alternative) until the person or creature is dead. Thus, it is very important to never use the word ALL when referring to anything connected to Epilepsy. I have a friend on here who does NOT have STRESS as a trigger for seizures. This is rare, but not impossible.