Blog #159: DO YOU HAVE SUBTLE EPILEPSY SYMPTOMS THAT ARE UNRECOGNIZED?
Stacie Kalinoski is an Emmy-award winning reporter. She also isan epilepsy nurse practitioner. In the April/May 2018 issue of thepatient-geared journal Brain and Life, page 56, she writes of herown epilepsy. Kalinoski pursuesbrain surgery and she documents this journey.
Kalinoski experienced herfirst convulsion in college. An avid runner, while running she notedregular episodes of déjà vu, that weird feeling like sheis in some environment or is seeing something for the very first time, but itfelt like that the experience had happened to her before. Most of us haveexperienced such a feeling once or twice in our lives but frequent recurrentepisodes are abnormal. They suggest epileptic auras, a problem in ourbrain’s temporal lobe. Another brain phenomenon that is similar, but theopposite, is jamais vu. Here, what’s familiar to us nolonger feels or seems, familiar. For example, one’s bedroom, one’s car, orfamiliar people—all feel new during the seconds or minutes of the episode.
Kalinoski’s hiddenepilepsy flowered into multiple blank outs after a strenuous marathon run. Shehad had little sleep. Then she lost awareness and cut herself preparingvegetables. A neurologist diagnosed epilepsy. She started antiseizuremedications. Too little sleep and strenuous running accompanied more jamais vuepisodes. She became disorientated after a run. She found herself lost despitebeing very near her house. She required help getting home only two blocks away.Neurological testing showed an abnormal brain focus originating epilepticseizures. A temporal lobectomy followed. This decreased the number of heraura-seizures. These subsequently became episodes of strange tastes lasting afew seconds. Many people also experience auras as smells that aren’t reallythere—olfactory hallucinations.
In my novel, DINGS, Icreated a character who has olfactory hallucinations. The neurologist in thenovel queried if his young patient had ever imagined smelling something thatwasn’t actually there. The neurologist then offered “burning rubber” smells, acommon symptom of complex partial seizure auras. The novel’s character agreesthat he does perceive smells like that. A diagnosis of epileptic blank-outseizures is made, heretofore unrecognized. The mother is devastated uponlearning her son has epilepsy. She conjures up public prejudices. She learnsthat one percent of the population has epilepsy, over three million Americans,but the epilepsy in half of them, encouragingly, is well controlled. They arefree of seizures on treatment. Chief Justice Roberts of the United StatesSupreme Court, despite his epilepsy, has achieved a leading position in oursociety.
hard-hitting emotional family medical drama, “DINGS, is told from a mother’s point of view.“DINGS” is his first novel. Aside from acclamation on internet bookstoresites, U.S. Report of Books, and the Hollywood Book Review, DINGS has beenadvertised in recent New York Times Book Reviews, the Los Angeles TimesCalendar section and Publishers Weekly. DINGS teaches epilepsy and is now available ineBook, audiobook, soft and hard cover editions.
